Flames
by Jaenelle Angelline
Summary: Xavier befriends an orphan whose guardian is using her for his own purposes. This summary stinks, I don't know how to explain it, just read it please. FINISHED. Read, review please! Thanks for all reviews so far!
1. Default Chapter

Chapter 1: Amy

Xavier sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes.

He had been immersed in paperwork for most of the day. A quick glance at the clock showed it was almost five. The sun was setting over the western side of the property, and the bookshelf against the east wall of his study was painted a bright orange.

Something seemed odd, out of place, and he stopped for a moment to consider what it could be. It hit him. The mansion was quiet. He leaned back in his chair, using his telepathy to check on his X-Men.

Logan and Remy were playing pool downstairs in the rec room; Ororo was up in her attic taking a nap; Jean and Scott were in their room, doing…Xavier turned his attention elsewhere before Jean noticed anything and before he got more information than he wanted. Except for them, the mansion was empty, and therefore quiet. It was a rare occurrence in a building where so many people lived together.

Then the peace was shattered by the sound of slamming doors, and Rogue, Betsy, Warren, Bishop, and Nathan came in. Xavier sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose, where he could feel a tiny bit of a headache starting. Quiet. He just wanted a little peace and quiet.

He turned, looked out the window. The lake, on the edges of his property, wasn't being used. He remembered how he used to like sitting at the edge of the water there. Maybe he should do so again.

He went to his room, shed the pressed shirt and tie he always wore in favor of a well-worn, comfortable green sweater. It was October, and the breeze was bound to be cooler coming in over the water. That done, he went to the wardrobe, opening the doors and getting into the regular wheelchair. The antigrav personal transport he usually sat in wouldn't do well over the uneven ground. The Shi'ar technology was wonderful, but it did have its limits. And he could use the arm exercise.

He got across the green lawns with a bit of effort, and he thought vaguely that he really was getting too old for this kind of exertion. He paused finally, some yards still from the lake, and stared in surprise.

There was a girl there, sitting on the big, flat stone by the lake. About fourteen, he guessed, with thick waist-length black hair, gold wire-rimmed glasses, and a gray pleated skirt with a white button-up blouse. White ankle socks and black loafers completed the ensemble. Some kind of uniform, he guessed. She was speaking softly while looking down at something in her lap, and he edged closer, the better to hear what she was saying.

__

"Fairest Cordelia," She was reading softly, _"that art most rich, being poor/ Most choice, forsaken; and most lov'd, despis'd!/ Thee and thy virtues I here seize upon/ Be it lawful, I take up what's cast away./ Gods, gods! 'tis strange that from their cold'st neglect/ My love should kindle to inflam'd respect./ Thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my chance,/ Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France:/ Not all the dukes of waterish Burgundy/ Can buy this unpriz'd precious maid of me./ Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind:/Thou losest here, a better where to find."_

Xavier remembered that passage. Shakespeare's King Lear, act one, scene one. He quoted the next lines with her. _"Thou hast her, France: let her be thine; for we/ Have no such daughter, nor shall ever see/ That face of hers again. Therefore be gone/ Without our grace, our love, our benison./ Come, noble Burgundy."_

She had turned, wide-eyed and startled, at the sound of his voice, and as he stopped speaking, she closed her book and looked ready to run. Xavier held out a hand to her. "Wait," he said. She stopped, stood still, looked at him warily. He brought his wheelchair up beside the flat rock she had been sitting on, and chose his words carefully, because she looked like she was going to start running at any moment. "Do you like Shakespeare?"

She nodded, relaxing just the tiniest bit. "Yes." Then, as if the dam broke, her next words came tumbling out in a rush. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be trespassing, I didn't see any property markers, please don't be mad, I promise I won't do it again if you tell me where your property ends and the orphanage's grounds begin…"

Ah. So that was it. The large, rambling building on the parcel of land adjacent to Xavier's was finally occupied, then. Now that he thought back, he remembered reading something in the papers about the house having been purchased. The purchasers were apparently turning the house into an orphanage. It was a good use for the building; though the land around it wasn't as extensive as his, it would easily be large enough for playing fields for children.

"This side of the lake belongs to me," he said. Raising an arm to point to a large oak tree roughly a hundred yards away, he continued, "From the oak, there, to the red maple there." He indicated a small maple sapling almost three quarters of the way around the lake from the oak. "But I don't mind if you want to come here. It's a nice, quiet spot for reading. Just so long as you don't damage anything, or destroy anything, you're welcome to come here as often as you like."

She smiled. While she could never be called pretty, the smile lit up her face and made her attractive. "Thank you," she said. "The orphanage is never as quiet as I like for reading, and King Lear is one of my favorites. I like to read it aloud. Some of the boys say I'm weird."

"Dear, all boys that age think girls are weird." Xavier chuckled, thinking of himself at that age. "What's your name, by the way?"

"Amy," she said, holding out her hand. "Amy McCarly."

He took the proffered hand. "Charles Xavier." She had a firm, strong grip for someone so young.

A sudden breeze riffled the lake's surface, and Xavier shivered in the chill. The sun was dipping below the horizon, and the chill October night air was creeping in. "I really must be getting back, Amy," he said. "Shouldn't you be going in soon?"

She checked her watch, smiled. "I have until dinner, and that's at six. I've got probably fifteen minutes. I'd like to finish the first act."

"Feel free," he gestured to the rock. "I guess I'll see you again sometime, then?"

"If you're sure you don't mind," she said shyly. She settled herself back on the rock, opened her book, and Xavier turned his wheelchair around and headed toward the mansion.

A few yards away one of the wheels caught on a rock and stalled, dumping him unceremoniously to the ground. He hit the grass with a thump that jarred him, and he gritted his teeth as the ever-present pain in his spine flared. Before he could get up, a pair of small, strong hands was lifting his shoulders, helping him sit up. "There you go," she said gently, "Now wait while I get the chair." She got the chair upright, and helped him over to it. He got a good grip on the arms, unsure of how much weight she could handle and determined to help her as much as she could. To his surprise, she lifted him into his chair in one swift, easy movement, and then settled the slim volume of Shakespeare in his lap as she took the handles of the chair. "That's your home, up there?" she nodded toward the roof of the mansion, poking up above the trees. He nodded, still breathless from the spike of pain from his back. She stopped. "Lean forward," she said gently. Surprised, he did, and she placed a hand at the small of his back, where the pain was worst, and ran her finger lightly, in circles, around the area. To Xavier's surprise, the pain lessened.

"Where did you learn that?" he said curiously.

"My grandfather was a paraplegic," she said quietly as she started to push his wheelchair toward the mansion. "I lived with him after my parents died in a plane crash. He would have me do that each evening, or whenever the pain got bad. It helped, or so he always said." She was quiet for a moment. "He was a construction worker. One day an unsecured beam fell from a crane from thirty feet up, and crushed his spine. They couldn't fix it."

She gave a short, bitter laugh. "He wasn't much pleased when his son and daughter in law died and left him with a seven-year-old granddaughter. There weren't a whole lot of things I could do to help him, at first, but then I got used to him, and he taught me all sorts of things I could do to ease his pain. Then one evening when I was ten we were coming back from my ballet recital with my best friend, and a drunk driver crashed into the van. My friend, her mother, and my grandfather were killed instantly; I almost died too, but the firemen pulled me out of the burning car."

Xavier was silent. She had seen so much tragedy, for one so young. No wonder she had such a haunted look in her wide brown eyes. "I'm sorry," he said finally, not knowing what else to say.

"Don't be," she said, her tone forcibly cheerful. "I'm still alive."

The back door opened as they were coming up to it, and Jean came out. She smiled at the girl, but addressed her words to Xavier. "Charles, we were worried! We couldn't find you! Where were you!" 

He gave her a 'later' look and said firmly, "Amy, meet Jean. She's one of my students here at the school."

Amy shook hands with the gorgeous redhead, rather tongue-tied. "Hello," she finally got out. "Amy McCarly. I'm one of the orphans from the new orphanage on the other side of the lake. I was trespassing unknowingly, and I met Mr. Xavier down at the lake." She turned to Xavier. "School?"

"Yes, I run a school for mutants here," he said. "My students learn to control their powers and use them. This is the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning."

She nodded, a light dawning over her face. "I remember seeing the sign on your front gate," she said. "It didn't hit me until just now. Well, we should get along then; I'm a mutant too. Some of the kids at the orphanage are, though not many, and I'm the only girl."

"What can you do?" Xavier asked. 

Amy held out her hand, palm out. In seconds, a tiny ball of flame was dancing on her palm. She tossed it from one hand to the other, then juggled it for a moment before it disappeared. "It's useful for reading under the covers after curfew, but not for much else," she said with a shrug.

Xavier could think of a lot of things that could be done with a power like that, but at just that moment, the sound of a far-off whistle reached their ears as they stood by the back door. Amy jerked. "That's the come-in whistle," she said, alarmed. "I have to go if I don't want to be late for dinner. Good night, Mr. Xavier: it was nice to meet you, Miss Jean!" And she took off running.

Jean watched with some amusement as the long coltish legs took their owner swiftly off into the twilight. "She's quite a child," she said. "Charles, how did you find her?"

"She was down by the lake, sitting on the star-gazing rock and reading King Lear," Xavier said as Jean pushed his wheelchair into the warm kitchen. He felt something hard under his hands, and looked down in surprise, to see he was still holding Amy's slim little volume.

He went up to his room, dropped off the book and the sweater, and dressed in his usual attire for dinner. He got back into his hoverchair, putting the one he had so lately fallen out of into the closet, and went down to dinner.

Betsy teased him as he came back into the dining room, "We heard you met quite the friend today." He looked up at the tall Asian woman and grimaced. There was something about women, news traveled with them faster than light.

Over dinner he told them about Amy. "She's one of the orphans from the orphanage next door. Apparently someone has bought the building and restored it. I've seen it once; it probably looks better now than it did, but it's perfect for an orphanage. It's mostly normal children, from what she said, but there are a few mutant children there as well. She's apparently the only girl." He looked at his X-Men, sitting around the table. "I gave her permission to use the lake as her reading spot. If you see her, just say hi, and keep going."

Scott spoke. "There can't be a lot of quiet time in the orphanage to read," he said, his voice laden with empathy. He understood what it was like, having grown up in an orphanage himself, until Xavier had rescued him and brought him here. "But Charles…just her, or are they all allowed by the lake?"

Xavier frowned. "It wouldn't be fair if they weren't all allowed to come." 

Scott objected. "Charles, some of the others won't be as considerate of the property as she is," he said. "Speaking from experience, if it's anyone else, especially some of the older boys, we'll be seeing spray painted graffiti all over the trees in a short time."

"Okay," Xavier said after some reflection. "I agree with you. If we catch any of the children destroying anything or harming anything, inform me, and I'll talk to the headmaster of the orphanage and have them kept away from the lake."

He was getting into bed later when the book caught his eye. He'd go down to the lake tomorrow evening and wait for her, to give her the book back. 

He picked it up, idly, and was surprised to see a yellowed, well-worn envelope fall out of it. As he picked it up, he saw, written across the back, "My very dear Amy." The writing was a strong, masculine hand.

He knew he shouldn't read it, but curiosity was too much. Handling the yellowed sheet of paper carefully, he opened it and read.

__

My dear Amy, the letter began._ You've always loved Shakespeare, and when other children wanted to be read fairy tales before going to bed, you wanted me to read Shakespeare. Your mother and I thought, then, that an appropriate gift for your sixth birthday would be a copy of your favorite play. Your very first 'grown-up' book. Read it, and love it, and think of us when you do. We love you, Amy. _

It was signed, _Daddy and Mommy._

Xavier felt tears sting his eyes. She loved this book because it was her first, because she had gotten it from her parents, now dead. Poor child, to have lost her parents at such a young age. He folded the paper carefully, tucking it back into the envelope, and set the book by his bed. He would return it to her tomorrow. If she wasn't at the lake, then he would visit the school.

Amy arrived back at the orphanage late and out of breath. The Headmaster wasn't pleased. "You're late, McCarly," he said to her. "You will go to bed early tonight, and tomorrow you'll be in the front halls with the inside crew."

She stared down at the toe of her shoe. Early to bed wasn't a problem, but the front halls were murder. It wasn't fair that they had to clean the place up themselves, she thought rebelliously.

The house had been abandoned for years. Windows had broken in the front halls, letting in rain, wind, leaves, and other detritus all over the floors. As a result, what once was gleaming hardwood floors were now rough, warped boards that had to be pulled up and replaced. The orphans had been hard at work for days now, sweeping, cleaning, and scrubbing. The walls were decent, finally, but tomorrow they would be pulling up the rough boards. She could already feel the splinters digging into her fingers.

She had been on outside duty today, sweeping and clearing the front walk, clearing out the garage for the staff's cars, and trimming the hedges. Two of the older boys had taken the lawnmowers to the overgrown grass of the lawn and the back, so at least that was done. Hannah, Sarah, and Vanessa, three of the other orphans, were planting flowers and shrubs around the grounds.

She sat down to a silent dinner, and stared horrified at the mess on her plate. Cold, half-cooked burgers again, canned beans again! The staff told everyone that the poor meal was due to the kitchen group's inability to clean everything adequately. There were angry stares all around the table, directed at the three girls and two boys who were supposed to have cleaned, but Amy didn't look up. She was sure they had done the best they could. She did her best to eat the cold canned beans, but when she bit into the burger, the taste of blood filled her mouth and she couldn't eat. She put her share down and waited silently for everyone else to finish eating, not even caring when Dave, one of the biggest bullies, stole her burger. Then she climbed the stairs with the other girls to the rooms designated as theirs, all silent because everyone was too tired to talk. 

There were fifteen girls here, and twenty-six boys. Seven of the boys were mutants; she was the only mutant girl. Drew could levitate things; Stefan could walk through walls; and Matthew could create illusions out of thin air. Lucas did this weird mass-shifting thing where he could lighten the weight of anything he touched (it had come in handy when they'd had to move the furniture into the house). Greg could read minds; Shawn could make any object lying around into a flying projectile (he had already been put to use driving nails into boards.) Chris could run faster than the eye could follow.

She suddenly realized she'd left her precious book back with Mr. Xavier. She mentally cursed herself for it. If he tried to come here tomorrow he would see her on her hands and knees pulling boards around like a common servant; what would he think of her then? Well, she'd have to find some time tomorrow to slip away. Maybe the free hour they were given just before lunch; she could run up there and ask for her book back. She was too tired to do any extra reading tonight; she could barely keep her eyes open as she did her homework. Really, the staff did give them a lot of homework, though she supposed that they did have to keep up with whatever the educational requirements mandated by the state.

She finally fell into bed with a sigh as the lights went out, and closing her eyes, she let her mind drift. The rock by the lake was a lovely place to sit and read, and she was so glad that Mr. Xavier had told her she could come back. She wouldn't tell anyone else; for one, the Headmaster and the rest of the staff of teachers wouldn't like it, and two, if she did, someone would find a way to ruin it for her. The last place they'd been in, the Blackstone Orphanage's first location, had been condemned after a water pipe had burst and rendered the whole building soaked and unstable. She knew why the pipe had burst; Stefan had found her reading nook, a tiny cubby under the attic stairs, and tried to walk through the wall into it holding a can of spray paint. The knowledge hadn't done her any good; Stefan threatened to hurt her if she told anyone. He'd beaten her up once before; she wasn't going to repeat the experience

So she kept the knowledge to herself, and didn't tell anyone anything. Just as she would here. She would keep her head down, keep her nose clean, get good grades, and take the entrance exams for the local community college as soon as she could. When she was eighteen, she could leave here, and college seemed a good place to start out on her own.

Amy sighed, and drifted off into sleep.


	2. Orphanage

Chapter 2: Orphanage

She got up the next morning, still tired, and dragged herself wearily to the bathrooms to wash and brush her teeth, being careful to spit out the foul-tasting water. She pulled her long hair into two tight braids, hating the way they made her look so juvenile but knowing it was the easiest way to keep her hair out of her face while she was working.

They had breakfast, which, as the kitchen crew hadn't made as much headway as everyone was hoping the day before, was oatmeal. It was cold, thick, gluey stuff, and she couldn't eat much of it. The water from the faucets tasted fusty and metallic, and the teachers had bought bottled water to drink. The orphans, however, drank what came out of the tap. Amy couldn't, though.

Her stomach was still growling as she went off to her first class. This was English, taught my Mr. Fry. She loved this class usually, despite the fact that she was sure the teacher hated her. Mr. Fry was always going on about the latest mutant atrocity, looking at her and the boys as though they were to blame for everything that went wrong where mutants were concerned.

Today he was off on his favorite tangent; the mutant group known as the X-Men. Amy cheered silently in her head when he told the class in irritated tones that they had stopped the Sentinels from capturing another mutant. As he droned on, she lost herself in her favorite daydream; being one of them. Oh, to be able to fight the unjust things that happened to mutants every day, to be one of those beautiful women. Her favorite was the tall red-haired woman named Phoenix. For a brief moment, she thought that the woman she'd met at Xavier's the day before was Phoenix, but she shook off the idea. Jean was so…normal looking. Beautiful, but normal looking.

Mr. Fry's ruler came slamming down on her desk with a bang, and she actually jumped. She looked guiltily up into his enraged face. "Young lady, are you or are you not paying attention? What did I just say?"

She swallowed hard. She hadn't heard what he was saying.

"I thought not. Stand up," he said, his voice oozing satisfaction. She stood up. "Hold out your hands."

Oh, why couldn't there be an earthquake or something to happen, right now…but there wasn't, and she really hadn't been paying attention. She slowly held out her hands, palms up, and screwed her eyes shut as the ruler descended on her hands. Once. Twice. Three times. She put her hands down and opened her eyes.

"I didn't say I was done!" Mr. Fry's face was almost purple now. Amy bit her lip. Three was all he ever gave any of the others; there were some, like Dave, who could throw spitballs at the elderly man and not be disciplined at all. _This isn't fair!_ she raged inside her head as she held out her hands again, the palms already reddened by the three hard smacks she'd already received.

Four, five, six. She yelped aloud, tears springing to her eyes. The metal ruler had cut into her hand, and a line of blood welled across the heel of her hand where her thumb joined her hand. Mr. Fry smiled, a cruel smile that none of the other students could see, and very deliberately slammed the ruler down on the wound again. It cut deeper.

Tears of pain were trickling down her face when he stepped back after dealing the tenth blow. Her hand was bleeding now, really bleeding, the bright red stain on her blouse cuff getting larger by the minute. She winced. She was going to have to scrub the stain out of the cuff later when she washed her clothes. She sat down in her seat, biting her lip, and tugged her handkerchief from her pocket, surreptitiously wrapping it around her hand. She struggled to complete the writing assignments he handed out, feeling his glare boring into her as she sat there in pain.

Math was next, and this was a godsend, because math was something that came easily to her. She didn't have to think about it. She also didn't have much writing to do in this class. Mr. Garber, the math teacher, liked her. As she came up and handed him her paper at the end of class, he slipped her a Band-aid and winked. She was grateful. If the other members of the staff knew that he helped her, he'd be in trouble.

History came next, and then she would have that free hour before lunch. She could slip up to the mansion and reclaim her book before Mr. Xavier came to return it to her personally. She worked with a will through History, despite the throbbing in her hand. When she came up to his desk and handed it in, she was so eager to leave she was almost out the door before Mr. Dare called her back. "McCarly," he snapped. "I can't read any of this chicken scratch. And you've gone and left blood all over the paper. Sit back down and copy it over before you go to recess."

She nearly groaned, but sat back down. Four times she tried, and four times she dropped blood on the paper and had to start over. She slowed down, tried to take her time on he fifth copy, pulled her hand back whenever it threatened to smear the paper, and got it done, finally. She handed it in to the teacher and tried not to jump up and down impatiently as he inspected it. "Looks okay," he said finally. "You can go."

She took off at a run, desperate to get outside and get her book, but as she got out the back door to the newly-mowed green lawn, she was met by the sight of the others lining up to go inside. She fell into line behind them, wishing she could scream in frustration.

Lunch was a peanut butter sandwich and an apple. She stared at it hungrily, waiting for Headmaster Gilmore to finish saying grace before she could eat. She was starving. As soon as he said the last word, she seized her sandwich.

It was snatched out of her grasp.

She turned, and met the eyes of Dave the bully. He was holding her sandwich.

"Give it back," she said.

"Oh, I thought you didn't want it," he said snidely. "You didn't want your dinner last night, and breakfast this morning, I thought maybe you didn't want this, either." He took a big bite.

"That's mine! Give it back!" She lunged for his arm.

"What's going on here?" Came a loud voice, and she froze, looking up at Headmaster Gilmore.

Dave spoke first. "I finished mine first, and she didn't seem to want hers, so I just took it! You're always telling us not to waste food." Amy wanted to scratch his eyes out.

"You'll stay in an extra half hour," Headmaster Gilmore said to her. "During your free hour this evening, you'll stay in and do some extra work on the floors."

Amy dropped back into her seat, defeated. She went through the rest of her classes in Science, Geography, Chemistry, and French numbly, then reported to the front hall for cleaning at four o'clock. She grimly donned the black denim apron handed to her—well, they didn't want her uniform ruined and have to pay for another one, now, did they?—and took the hammer they handed to her. 

Mark, the oldest boy there, silently showed her how to catch the head of the nail holding the floorboard down in the fork of the hammer claw and yank it out. It looked easy, especially with a seventeen-year old doing it, but for a fourteen year old girl it was backbreaking work. She found herself tugging at some nails, her back aching from the crouched position, weeping at the hopelessness of her effort before one of the other guys, Ward, came over and pulled it out. "The Headmaster's really got it in for you," Ward said. "He hasn't assigned any other girls to front hall duty, not even as punishment. Even Vanessa…she spilled a whole bucket of cleaning fluid all over the floor yesterday when she saw a roach…all he did was tell her she had to go to the library and help unpack books on her free hour last night."

When the Headmaster came down at five o'clock and Amy stood up wearily, the front hall was stripped of its boards and the bare flooring lay exposed. He smiled. "Good job, boys, go on and run outside. Take a load off. McCarly, start nailing down the new boards. They're right there behind you. Nails are over there." He pointed to the bucket. "I'll be back at five-thirty. Don't leave any gaps between the boards, make sure the nail heads are flush with the boards so no one trips on a protruding nail, and don't waste the nails! If one bends, you straighten it."

Amy fell to her knees and cried once the Headmaster and the boys were gone. She was hungry, she was tired, she ached all over, and her hands had what felt like millions of splinters in them. But the Headmaster's word wasn't to be gainsaid, and she laid the first brand new board on the floor and grimly went about pounding the nails in.

Absorbed in what she was doing, and trying to do the best she could so she wouldn't have to stay longer, Amy was startled by the sound of the doorbell ringing. She looked up in disbelief. Oh, please, not Mr. Xavier…

Jean pushed Charles down to the lake, and they waited until almost five-fifteen. Finally determined she wasn't going to come, they went back to the house. "Scott," he said, rolling into the kitchen where he was warming a quick dinner, "Do you think you could drive me over to the orphanage next door? Amy left her book with me the other day when she left in such a hurry, and I'd like to return it."

"Certainly," Scott said, turning the stove off and drying his hands on a towel. 

The lawns were neatly mowed and edged, the bushes were trimmed, but the house still looked as dilapidated as Xavier remembered it. He had been here with a realtor six months ago, considering buying the house and the land, and tearing the house down, but had eventually decided against it.

Scott rang the doorbell, and they waited. He raised his hand again to ring, but the door swung open. A man stood at the door. He was a tall, hulking, burly man, dressed impeccably in a black suit, and he was scowling. The scowl disappeared abruptly, replaced with a falsely pleasant smile. "Yes? What can I do for you?" he said. 

Xavier struggled to keep his tone light. There was something he didn't like about this man, a sort of sliminess to his psychic signature that made Xavier want to wipe his mental 'fingers.' "I'm the Headmaster of the school next door," he said. "I'm sure you saw it on your way up here, the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning?"

"Oh, yes! Yes, I saw it! Please come in! I didn't think we were going to have visitors so soon…" and still babbling, he stepped aside to allow the three to enter.

Xavier blinked. There was no flooring down the hall, just bare building structure. And, halfway down the hall, Amy knelt, holding a hammer, a nail, and kneeling on a board. Xavier didn't need to be a telepath to read what he saw in her eyes; terror. Sheer, unbridled terror. He slipped into the top layer of her mind as he stood, looking at the ceiling chandelier and trying to find something nice to say about the immense ugliness of it.

Fear. _Don't look at me._ He flicked his eyes away._ Don't try to give me the book if they find out I was off grounds they'll punish me._ Oh, so that was it. Well, he could hang onto the book a little longer. He could use as an excuse the other reason he'd come here. The Headmaster led the way off to the small sitting room beside the front door. "Amy," he snapped. "Don't stand there ogling the visitors. Get out of here." She dropped her hammer, put the nail she was holding back in the bucket of them, and fled.

Jean was appalled at the tone he used to the young girl. The mere fact that she was trying to do repair work on a house appalled her. Children shouldn't be doing that kind of thing. What kind of place was this, that they would do that to their charges?

Scott's keen eyes were roving around the building. He saw peeling paint, chipped wood, all things that should be taken care of by building experts, not children. Amy, out in the hall, was a little too thin to be healthy. The old boards must have left splinters in her hands, and he hadn't seen any gloves. She had had a handkerchief tied around her hand, but it wasn't a bandage, and he was sure he'd seen blood on the bandage. He kept his face carefully impassive as he thought, _Am I the only one who sees a lot of things__wrong with this picture?_

**No,** Jean's mindvoice was equally grim, though her face was set in a friendly, pleasant expression. **Amy shouldn't be doing stuff like that. She's only, what, fourteen, for goodness sake! And I thought she looked a bit unhealthy when I saw her last night, but I wasn't sure because it was dark. She's too thin. Looks like she's not eating enough. Or they're not giving her enough to eat.**

**The next time I see her, I'm going to have a little talk with her about what they're doing to her here,** Xavier said.

He continued to speak, pleasantly. "I was wondering if you have any mutant children in your care. If you do, perhaps you'll consider allowing them to attend school with me, next door. The Institute teaches a wide variety of subjects, all the basics, as well as a variety of related subjects that will assist them in understanding how their powers work and fine-tuning their control. Mrs. Summers, here," he indicated Jean, who nodded slightly, "teaches Psychology, and Mr. Summers instructs the students in Physics."

"Oh, well, that's a very generous offer, oh, yes it is," the man said, and Jean had to fight the urge to throttle him. He was too smooth, too unctuous, and he irritated her. From the bunching of muscles in her husband's jaw, he too wanted to wipe the oily smirk off the man's face. "But I'm afraid our humble establishment hasn't got the required funds to have our 'special' children pursue their 'interests' in such a manner."

"It would not require payment," Xavier said. "I would be glad to tutor them free."

The man stood, evidently unwilling to pursue the conversation further. 'A generous offer, yes, and it is one I will have to bring up at the next staff meeting. It is a good offer, and I thank you very much for making it, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave. It's almost dinner time, and I have to be there, see…" and with such drivel trailing from his lips he escorted Xavier and the Summers' out to the front step. Xavier stared with a great deal of dislike at the front door, having to suppress an urge to open it and go back in. Jean's hand on his arm stopped him. "Charles, she's waiting for us just at the end of the drive."

She was indeed. Xavier rolled down the window as they pulled up. She still had the same handkerchief tied around her hand. "Amy," he tried to say. She interrupted him with a torrent of words. "I'm sorry, I'll explain on my free hour tomorrow, down by the lake, at six." They heard the whistle again, and she started. "I have to go, please," she held out her hand. Xavier put her book in it, and she turned and ran back through the twilight toward the house. 

Scott sat back in the driver's seat as they went back down the road to the mansion. "I don't like him," he said grimly. "I know my experiences with orphanages haven't been pleasant, and that might make me biased, but I don't like what I felt back there."

Jean made a face. "I didn't like him either. Charles, I'd really like to be there...or at least listen in when you talk to her tomorrow."

"I was going to ask you that," Charles said.

Headmaster Gilmore sat back in his chair. In stark contrast to the children's own unfinished quarters, theirs were completely refinished. Warm gold wallpaper, expensive crimson easy chairs, recliners, and futons littered the staff room. His own bedroom was done in the same colors.

"I am not happy about this," he growled. "Not happy at all. How are we to pull off the robbery now? The busybodies next door will notice if we disappear suddenly."

Mr. Fry mumbled, "Who cares what they think? We don't have to give anyone explanations once we're millionaires. But I told you I thought this location was a little too remote to get at the Manhattan Savings Bank."

Gilmore sat down. "Our 'insider' suggested this as the ideal location, and it is. With all the work we're having our 'special' children do, and the scant food we're giving them, they should be thin enough to pull off the robbery. And since we've got that vault built in the basement, they can practice on that. We'll do it just like we planned; Greg will read the minds of the people inside the bank, and tell us when the coast is clear; Drew, Stefan, and Lucas will get in and take the gold. Drew will levitate the stuff while Lucas lightens the mass of the gold. Stefan will walk the gold through the walls. Matthew will go in and put up an illusion of the gold still being there until we're well away, and then Greg, who will be loafing in the alley behind the bank, will wipe Matthew's mind so no one can trace the heist back to us. Chris will run Greg back to us, and we'll make a clean getaway. Then we'll have our little pyromaniac Amy set fire to the bank so that any evidence of our little heist will be erased."

"But boss, our 'insider'...he's still going to be in the bank, won't he?" 

Gilmore smiled. "That's the beauty of it, guys, all that gold, and we're not going to have to share it with anyone. It's all ours! I didn't tell the 'insider' about Amy. He'll never know what hit him!"


	3. Explanations

Chapter 3: Explanations

Scott and Jean were hiding in the small copse of trees behind the stargazing rock when Amy came running up at six the next day. "I came as soon as I could get away, " she said, panting a bit from exertion. "I'm sorry, I couldn't get away earlier."

Xavier was dying to ask her the questions he had lain awake all night wanting the answers to, but he put them off as he saw her hand come up to push a lock of hair off her forehead. "What happened to you?" he said, taking her hands gently in his and turning them over. He winced at the swollen welts that crossed her palms. "Amy, what happened?"

"Oh," she pulled her hands quickly out of his and hid them in the pockets of her uniform skirt, "I wasn't paying attention in Mr. Fry's English class yesterday, and he used his ruler. It's okay; it'll go away in a few days. It always does."

"Always? This happens on a regular basis?" he tugged at her arms. She kept them stubbornly buried in her pocket, refusing to yield to his efforts. Finally he said, "If you want to suffer, then fine. We have medical supplies back at the mansion; if you wanted to come I could get something to take the sting out of those welts, and get the rest of those splinters out too."

She looked undecided for a moment, then pulled her hands out of her pockets. "I'm sorry. It's just…they never help us when we get hurt; we're supposed to learn to take care of ourselves. I'd be glad if you'd help me," she said quietly. He looked at her hands as she held them out to him.

They were a mess. In addition to the welts, which would go away eventually and which Hank could do nothing about, there were splinters of wood driven into her fingers and palms. They should be hurting fiercely.

He turned and waved to Jean, who stepped out from behind the tree. "Jean, if you could push me back up…I don't think Amy could do anything right now with her hands the way they are."

Jean took the handles of the wheelchair as Scott came out from behind the tree too. He fell into easy step beside Amy, and tried to sound casual as he asked, "Does this happen on a regular basis, these welts on your hands?"

She blushed. "Only when I'm not paying attention in class. All the teachers do it, honest," she said earnestly, noting the look on his face. "Mr. Fry, the English teacher, started going on about his pet peeve and I just didn't want to listen to it. He's always criticizing the X-Men for what they do." She shrugged. "I think they're great. They're always helping people. I wish I could be one when I grow up."

Xavier thought to Jean, **We can't get Hank to look at her. If we do she'll know we are the X-Men, and I'm not sure how good teenaged girls are at keeping secrets. When we get in, go and get one of Hank's medkits and we'll see if we can take care of her ourselves.**

Jean sent back,** Good Lord, Charles, I can't imagine anyone wanting to lead the life we lead, to really want to do the job we do! There are times when I don't even like being me! **Scott heard Jean giggling hysterically in the back of his mind, and had to fight to keep a straight face. It wasn't often that they heard anyone say they wanted to be an X-Man when they grew up; hell, if he'd known what kinds of things he would later go through, he probably wouldn't have signed up in the first place.

Then he looked over at Jean, and he smiled. If he had never signed up, he'd never have met Jean, and he would have gone through life missing the other half of his soul. No, things happened the way they had for a reason. If his reason was to find his soulmate and lead the X-Men, then that was what he'd do.

They reached the mansion's back door, and Xavier checked his watch as they walked in. It was only five-fifteen, but he'd asked Jean if she'd make a quick dinner, for Amy. She would have enough time to eat, then, before she left, because he had felt her stomach-cramping hunger pangs in the hall at the orphanage. She was still hungry, now, but the pangs weren't quite as acute. She had managed to eat something since the day before.

Scott sat her down in a kitchen chair as Jean went to get one of Hank's medkits. Out in the hall, she ran into Storm, who was about to walk into the kitchen. "'Ro," she said, stopping the other woman before she could enter, "Not right now, please. We've got one of the girls from the orphanage in there right now, Charles is trying to get as much information out of her as possible. She should be going in about a half hour, could you wait till then?"

"Of course," Ororo said, and Jean gave her a hug as she stepped back into the kitchen.

Amy was staring around her at the huge space. "Oh, wow," she said, impressed. "I guess this is what they want the kitchen at the orphanage to look like. I don't think we'll be able to do that, though."

"You children are fixing up the house yourselves?" Xavier asked, though he already knew the answer. He had seen her putting a new floor on the front hall, after all.

She nodded. "We've done so at all the places we've lived at," she said. "The buildings are always yucky, and we've always had to fix them up ourselves. The Headmaster tells us we'll have to learn to take care of ourselves someday, and being able to fix up a house ourselves will help us learn that."

Jean had managed to extract the remaining splinters from the girl's hands, and now she put a glob of salve on Amy's palm. "Rub that around," she said as she packed the supplies she'd used back into the kit. "Your skin will absorb it. There's an anesthetic in it, so your fingers might go a little numb, but it's only temporary, and you won't feel any pain, at least."

Scott made a big show of getting up and going to the stove. "What's this, Jean?" he said, lifting the lid to the steaming pot. Amy's eyes widened as the smell of the hearty beef stew reached her nose, and her stomach rumbled audibly. "Hey, Amy, do you have time to eat with us real quick before you go?"

Amy hesitated, and Jean said cheerfully, "We'd love to have you, Amy."

She looked at the clock in the corner, and smiled. "Maybe just a little bit," she said. "The whistle blows at six, that's when I have to be in. It's only five thirty now. I've got a little time."

"How many places have you lived in since you joined the orphanage, Amy?" Xavier asked as Jean brought steaming bowls of stew over.

"Mmm….Five," she said. "Here and there, all over. The mansion next door will be number six." She waited for Jean to sit before she picked up her spoon. Her manners were impeccable, Jean noted.

"How many other children are there besides you?" Jean asked.

"Fifteen girls, twenty-six boys. Seven of the boys are mutants; I'm the only girl. They seem to be really selective about which mutants they admit into the orphanage.

"See, I'm from a city orphanage called Pinewood. They were getting overcrowded, and then out of nowhere one day Headmaster Gilmore showed up and told the Headmistress there that he was starting a new orphanage and that he was going to take some of her charges to help start his own. She was only too glad to get some of us out of her hair, but in the end, he only took three of us; me, and two other boys who weren't mutants, Tom and Mark. I still don't know why he picked me. 

"He went round to each of us in the mutant wing and asked us what we could do. There was a girl there, Tascha, she could make herself look like anything she was looking at, like a mirror. She made herself into a mirror image of him as he stood in front of him. Then there was Rita, she could open her mouth and sing, and just drive every thought out of your head when she hit a certain note. Like hypnosis. Then he came to me, and I did my little fireball-juggling trick for him, and then I did my dragon thing, and he stopped going through the room and said he'd take me. I spoke later to the mutant boys, and they finally unbent enough to tell me their 'selection' was pretty much the same. 

"Drew can levitate things, Stefan can walk through walls, Matthew can shape matter into illusions—I saw him pick up a stick once, and it got bigger, and made itself look like a boat. Luke touches stuff, and they get lighter, somehow. He helped me carry the beds in when we moved. Shawn can take anything, like a pebble, a stick, or even a cottonball, and throw it, and it turns into something that hurts. I can't describe it, it's like he makes bullets out of anything he throws. Greg can read minds, and Chris can run really, really fast, like the little bird in the Saturday morning cartoons always running away from the wolf animal."

She stopped talking to take a big bite of stew and chewed as Scott, Xavier, and Jean looked at each other over her head. Selective, indeed. Too selective. Who was Headmaster Gilmore, and why would he be 'selecting' such a diverse group of child mutants? For what purpose? Because there had to be one. The orphanage was just a front for something else, something larger.

Amy sat back and pushed her empty bowl away, the spoon rattling emptily in the bowl. "Thank you, that was the best I've eaten in a long time," she said happily to Jean. "The food at the orphanage is usually okay, but when we moved in, the water tasted funny, and I couldn't drink it. The other kids do, but I just can't. I tried and it made me throw up. Greg teased me about having a delicate stomach. Headmaster Gilmore bought bottled water for the staff, and I think I've seen Greg drinking some, but the rest of us don't get any. Anyway, we have to wash, bathe, cook, and clean with the water from the taps, and everything smells bad because the water's dirty. I snuck out last night and jumped in the lake because it was better than the water at the house. And I saw some of the others drinking from the lake too, so I tried it. It's a little muddy-tasting, but it's definitely better than the water from the house."

"You mean," Xavier thought his teeth would shatter, he was gritting them so hard in anger, "They didn't flush out the pipes when you moved in? You don't have clean water to cook or drink or bathe?"

Amy misunderstood the anger. "I'm sorry if my smell bothers you," she said, getting visibly smaller in her chair.

Jean laid a hand on her arm. "Amy, we're not mad," she said, "Just upset. You shouldn't have to live like that!"

Amy bit her lip, her eyes refusing to meet theirs, instead flitting restlessly over the kitchen. They lit on the clock, and she jumped up. "I have to go. The whistle will be blowing in a minute, and we only have two minutes after that to get in line." She opened the back door. 

"Wait! Amy!" Jean caught her arm. "Come here for dinner tomorrow. And you can use our shower. The lake's cold!"

"So's the water at the house. But I'll come. Thank you, you're so kind. I'll come if I can!" And she was gone.

Jean returned to the table just as the kitchen door opened and Remy, Ororo, and Logan walked in. Xavier was still sitting at the table. "I can't believe that," he said. "No clean water, no hot water, they have to clean up and fix the place themselves…there's something really wrong, Jean."

Ororo took Amy's empty bowl, washed it at the sink, and helped herself to some of the stew as she sat down. "I agree," she said. "No one should have to live like that, least of all, children."

"Just some a' them," Logan growled. "She said this Greg boy drinks the bottled water with the staff, but the other kids don't get none. That stinks ta me. Whatever they got these kids fer, whoever Greg is, he's the one that matters most to them, or they wouldn't be treatin' him special."

"Did you hear her say that the orphans have moved five times already? Why would they move so much? What is going on?" Scott said. "The orphanage I lived in never moved, never went anywhere. So why are they moving so much? What are they hiding? Are they trying to hide from something, or are they chasing something? And if Gilmore is responsible for all of this happening, then why is he doing this? What's his purpose? Wouldn't it be easier for him to move about if he didn't have children to worry about? Damn it, Charles, what is going on over there? I wish Amy had more time, so we could ask her straight out what's going on!"

Amy stared at the unappetizing mess on the plate in front of her. She couldn't eat this. Two slices of a disgustingly bloody something that looked like it had just come off roadkill without being cooked, instant mashed potatoes that were a dull brownish color from the water it was cooked in, and more of those horrible canned string beans. She picked up her fork and dug it in the beans, visions of Miss Jean's delicious stew swimming before her eyes. She had only had time to eat one bowl, but oh, how good that was! She ate the beans, stuck her fork in the potatoes, and stopped. She couldn't eat it, she just couldn't.

"Little Miss High-And-Mighty thinks she's too good to eat what we eat, huh?" said a voice behind her, and her face flushed with anger. It was Greg.

"Shove off, Greg, leave me alone," she snapped. "You're eating chicken and rich junk with the staff while we get stuck with roadkill and crap, so you're not the one to talk." 

He grabbed one of her braids, yanked it hard, snapping her head back until his face was only inches from hers. "Say that to my face, fireball," he snarled at her.

He was hurting her neck and her scalp, pulling her head back like that. Amy felt around in front of her for her plate, brought it up, and smashed it into his face. Blood-tinged meat juices and brown mashed potatoes splattered all over his face. She took advantage of his momentary befuddlement to get up from her place on the hard bench and run for the door as Greg spluttered and gasped and tried to get the slop off his face and out of his eyes. She pulled the door open, only to find her way out blocked by Headmaster Gilmore's tall, burly frame filling the door.

"Going somewhere, Amy?" he said.

He pushed her into a seat at the head of the table, and another plate was brought in, with the exact same contents as before. "Eat." Gilmore told her.

Amy stared at the plate. Dinner was almost over. By now the potatoes had congealed into a thick brown paste, and the meat looked more like roadkill than ever. She fought down the tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks, and shook her head. "No," she whispered, "I can't. I'll get sick. Please don't make me eat that." She was practically begging, and she hated herself for it, but he wasn't moved the least bit.

"We don't waste food here, girl, you know that. Eat it."

She ate the beans again resignedly, and took a forkful of the potatoes. She tried to put it in her mouth, but it tasted so bad she took it straight back out. She put her fork down and silently stared at the plate in front of her.

"You will sit there until you eat it." Gilmore said firmly.

She sat there. She was still staring at that plate when the end-of-dinner bell rang. The others got up and filed out, Greg looking back at her maliciously. When she tried to get up, Headmaster Gilmore pulled her back down firmly. "You will sit there until you eat it. All of it," he said.

She sat there, staring at her plate. She couldn't. She couldn't she couldn't she couldn't.

"Don't you have homework you need to do? If you don't hand it in tomorrow your teachers won't be happy. You don't get a note, either. It's all due to your own damn foolishness. Eat it."

Homework. Amy blinked at the tears that threatened to spill out of her eyes. She picked up the fork, dug it into the potatoes, squeezed her eyes shut, and put the fork into her mouth.

It tasted like paper and ground-up pennies. Her mouth went dry as the coppery taste filled it, and she nearly retched there at the table. She swallowed with difficulty and took another forkful. A much bigger one this time. The portions they gave the kids were so small that if she took large mouthfuls she could get it all down in two or three bites. She forced herself to swallow the second forkful, and forced herself to take the third, last, big mouthful. She swallowed, coughed on something hard in the potatoes, and that started it. She gagged and choked.

Gilmore clamped a hand over her mouth as her stomach heaved, trying to rid itself of the poisonous stuff filling it, but with her mouth held closed and her body held tight against his, she couldn't rid herself of the awful stuff. Eventually her body gave up, and she went limp, relaxing on the bench. Gilmore let her go, stepped back, and said, "Eat the meat now."

"I can't," Amy gasped, and to her own disgust, she began to cry. "Please, it looks like roadkill, it hasn't even been cooked thoroughly, please don't make me eat it, please…" She froze as his cold hand grabbed the back of her collar.

"Then use your fire to cook it, if you like your meat well done," he said coldly.

It was something she hadn't thought about. She gingerly cut a slice off with her table knife, speared it on her fork, and held it up, dripping, over her plate. Then she extended a finger out to it, and a tiny spurt of flame came from her fingertip, searing the meat brown. She turned the fork around, seared the other side, and put it in her mouth.

It didn't taste bad. She chewed thoughtfully. Okay, she could handle this. She cut herself another piece, seared it with her fire, and ate that. She repeated the process with the rest of the meat until it was all gone, and she looked up.

"Go," Gilmore said. She jumped up out of her seat and ran.

He sat there for a long while, looking at that empty plate. The water here was truly disgusting; he hadn't wanted to get the water pipes cleaned, because they weren't planning on still being here in two weeks. The other kids didn't have a problem. Sure, there was some grumbling, but everyone ate it, and no one had actually gotten sick, except her. Of course, that could have been the dead roach someone in the kitchen had planted in the second plate he had asked them to bring her, someone who didn't like her, but some people ate bugs, and it didn't bother them, so she would survive the incident.

It was odd that she'd never thought to use her power that way. Maybe he should take the headmaster of the other school up on his offer to show the kids how to use their abilities. After all, it could only help his plans, if they found some other way of using their powers. Except his son Greg, of course.

None of the other orphans knew he was really Greg Gilmore. They all thought he was just another Orphan. But he wasn't. He was Gilmore's son, and his ace in the hole. With Greg's mindreading powers, he had wiped all the mutant children's memories clean after the last five jobs they'd pulled; first the Bank of New Haven, in Connecticut; then the Bank of Cape Cod, where all the rich and famous stored their money. They had taken down the Bank of Atlantic City, the gambling center for the East Coast, and the Bank of Baltimore, and the Bank of Annapolis. Manhattan Savings and Loan was the place they were planning to hit, then they would head south and hit the Treasury in Washington. After that, Gilmore figured, he'd split the take with his three cohorts, and they'd live out the rest of their lives overseas being millionaires.

The plan was perfect. It couldn't fail.


	4. Sick

Chapter 4: Sick

Amy whimpered as she woke.

She had a horrible headache that threatened to split her skull open. Her throat felt dry and scratchy, and she had a dim recollection of getting up and throwing up the night before. When she tried to sit up, her head whirled and she could hardly stand up straight.

Hannah blinked at her as she came out of the bathroom. "Jeez, Amy, you okay? You look terrible." Then her nasty side took over and she sniggered, "Was it the dinner you ate last night? None of the rest of us got sick, why do you think you did? Is your stomach too delicate to handle regular food?" she laughed again as Amy stumbled into the bathroom, to throw up.

She was glad it was a Saturday, and classes weren't in session. The teachers seemed to be taking a rest day, too. After assigning half of the orphans to inside duty in the kitchen and the dormitories, and the other half to outside duty painting the house and fixing down loose shingles, they all disappeared. None of the students saw them again, except now and then Mr. Fry would wander through and check on them. Amy found herself inside with the crew in the kitchens, scrubbing the sinks and countertops, trying to scrub off years' worth of dust, grime, and dirt. She kept stopping and throwing up, and when Mr. Fry came through the kitchen again and saw her bent over the toilet yet again, he dismissed her. 

"Get out of here," he snapped, grabbing her scrubbing sponge out of her hand. "You're useless. Go do something useless somewhere. Get out!" Amy fled upstairs to the dorm, wanting desperately to lie down, but there were students at work up here, too, washing and waxing the floors. She fled, and found herself outside. She curled up at the base of a tree, feeling miserable as she shuddered her way through the dry heaves that followed an entire night and day of throwing up. She desperately wanted water to wash her mouth out, but she didn't dare use the tap water. Deciding that lake water was better than nothing, she wandered down to get a drink, wash her face, and compose herself.

A little later, she heard the sound of pounding feet, and looked up to see the kids streaming out over the lawns to play, the staff having released them from their chores to spend the rest of the beautiful sunny afternoon however they wished. If Amy had been in a mood to appreciate the gesture, she would have gone up to her room to get her book and drifted off somewhere to read, but as it was, she was so weak she couldn't move. She lay on the bank of the lake, staring into the water, for what seemed like ages before she heard a sharp pop-pop-pop and turned, startled at the sound.

Greg, Dave, Mark, and Howie had found the used paintball guns someone had given to the orphanage one Christmas (Amy couldn't remember which one) and the padded gear and paintballs that had gone with it. They were now engaged in an enthusiastic game of paintball, which stopped as they saw her lying on the edge of the lake. Greg walked up as she sat up. 

"Daydreaming, Fireball?" he teased. "Or still getting sick? I don't think the rich people who live over there will appreciate seeing you vomit in their water," he snickered. 

Amy drew her knees up to her chest, folded her arms on them, and rested her hot forehead against them "Greg, go away," she said. "Please. I'm not in the mood for it. I don't feel good."

He grabbed a handful of her shirt and hauled her head up. "Well, we need a target to practice our shooting," he said. "So get up and start running. We'll be nice; we'll even give you a twenty-second head start." He stepped back. "Nineteen, eighteen…" 

Amy blocked it out. She wasn't falling for his tricks today. He wouldn't do that to her. She let herself drift off into a hazy fog of aching head and sore stomach muscles.

Greg was surprised when she didn't get up. "Eight." he paused. Leaning close to her, he said, "Better start running. I hear these things hurt when they hit unpadded skin." When she still didn't move, he aimed his gun at her and shot a paintball squarely into her back.

Amy howled in surprise as bright red dye stained her white uniform shirt. The paintballs were designed to explode on contact, not to penetrate, but they did hurt hitting her skin, especially at point-blank range. It felt like someone had kicked her. She was sure she was going to have a bruise there later, and stared at Greg in shock.

He laughed. "Now I have your attention. Start running, Fireball, cause it's gonna hurt a lot more in a few seconds." He resumed counting. "Seven, six, five…"

Amy stared for a moment, wasting two more seconds. He was serious. She turned and forced her weak, shaking legs to move as he counted "Two, one! Let's get her!" and then pain erupted all over her as blue, green, and yellow paint colored her white shirt. The balls hit her body all over as she ran blindly, sobbing in pain and humiliation. "Stop it!" she screamed. "Stop it, leave me alone, oh, please leave me alone…" she tripped over a root on the ground and fell, and the paintballs smacked into her shoulders and cheek as she turned to scream at them. Then one well-aimed ball flew at her face. She wasn't quick enough bringing her arms up. It smashed into her glasses, breaking one of the lenses and scratching her eyelid with the flying glass. She screamed, turned, and stumbled blindly away from them, not caring where she was going, as long as it was away from them.

Just across the lake, the X-Men were out on the back lawn, enjoying the lovely warm fall day. Scott, Warren, Betsy and Jean were playing a game of volleyball with Remy, Logan, Ororo and Rogue, with the others cheering as they watched. Then, just before it was Logan's turn to serve, he stopped and raised his sunglasses. "Y'all hear that?" he said. He sniffed, but the wind was blowing in the wrong direction. He turned in the direction of the lake, about a hundred yards away, as a stumbling figure wearing a garish shirt and a gray pleated skirt stumbled out of the woods on the margin of the lake. Before anyone could react, four padded figures followed her, and the bright spots on the shirt were explained. Someone was shooting paintballs at her.

Logan growled as the panting figure tripped over the stargazing rock and fell to her knees, scraping them on the rough gray stone. The four boys were on her, shooting their paintball pellets at her. As he started toward them, and as the other X-Men broke out of their shock and started to cross the intervening space to stop the boys' assault, the girl turned to them. "Leave me ALONE!" she screamed, and raised her hands. 

A ball of fire shot from her hands and nearly set one boy's hair on fire. The second fireball just narrowly missed the second boy, who ducked just in time to escape being killed, and it hit a tree instead, engulfing the tree in a sheet of flame. Another ball of flame formed in her hands, but as she let it go, it stretched, elongated, until a great fiery dragon hung there in the air, between the girl and her attackers. The boys stared for one terrified moment before they screamed and ran. The dragon pursued them a short way before it dissipated into air.

Jean and Ororo were the first ones to reach the fallen girl. She sat in a crumpled heap on the rock, her hands still glowing from the fire she'd conjured a few moments earlier. Jean touched her shoulder, ignoring the paint that instantly dyed her hand blue and yellow. "Amy?"

Amy cried incoherently and fought the hands that touched her. "Stop it, just stop it, leave me alone, please!" she screamed.

Ororo grasped her hands firmly and said quietly, "You are safe, child, they are gone. Your fire manifestation chased them off. Are you injured?"

Amy squinted through the missing lens. "I hurt," she moaned. "Jean? Is that you?"

"I'm right here. Ssshh." Jean slipped an arm under one of Amy's and tried to help her stand, but Amy's legs wouldn't hold her, and she sank back down with a moan. She closed her eyes to ease the pounding in her head, and heard Jean say to someone she couldn't see, "Charles, she seems disoriented. Do you mind if we take her up to the mansion and check her out?"

"Of course not." Xavier was worried. The fire dragon had been pretty impressive, for someone who was only fourteen. Storm was busy calling down a mini rainstorm and Bobby was bombing the flames with ice to douse the burning tree, which continued to burn, notwithstanding the rain and ice trying to quench it. Jean turned back to the girl, tried to get her up. "Come on, Amy. Let's get you up."

But Amy's legs wouldn't hold her. She was too exhausted. 

Strong, slender arms slid under her back, another under her knees, and she was lifted gently and carried as if she weighed less than a feather. She tried to open her eyes, to see where she was going and who was carrying her, but the effort was too much, and she closed her eyes. In moments darkness claimed her, and she slipped into unconsciousness.

Jean led the way to the medlab, Rogue carrying Amy, and Hank sat up as Rogue set her down on an exam bed. "My stars and garters," he said, hurriedly pushing aside the notes he was taking on a sheet of paper and removing his glasses, "What's this? Do we have a refugee from a paint factory?" Humor aside, he was pulling off her ruined glasses as he shone a light into her eye. "No ocular damage, thank goodness. Jean, not to offend her sense of modesty, but I will need to get her clothing off, and women's clothing tends to make me feel as though I'm all thumbs…" Jean was already undoing the buttons on Amy's paint-soaked blouse.

Amy stirred, whimpered and opened her eyes. "No," she said, weakly trying to pull the fabric out of Jean's hands. "No, please, I don't want you to see…"

"Amy, sugah, ya ain't got nuthin' we girls ain't seen before," Rogue said as she gently but firmly unclenched the girl's fingers from around the edge of the shirt. "An' Hank here, well, he's seen just 'bout everythin' we girls got, seein' as how he's our doctor. Ain't nothin' new to him."

Jean carefully pulled off the paint-soaked shirt, and Rogue bit back an exclamation. White scar tissue marred the left side of Amy's body, starting from mid-chest, down below her waist, disappearing into her skirt. "Lord, sugah," she said, trying to hide her shock, "I know we got scars, bein' the X-Men and all, but surely you're too young for all that. What happened?"

Amy huddled on the bed, tears starting to fill her eyes. "My Mom and Dad died when I was seven, and I went to live with my grandfather. My friend's mother was driving her daughter, my grandfather, and me home from a ballet audition one night when a drunk driver crashed into the van. They all died instantly, but I was trapped under my Grandfather's wheelchair and I couldn't get out before the other car caught fire. The firemen pulled me out before the fire burned all of me, but I was still burned a bit. When I woke up in the hospital they told me I had to go to an orphanage because they couldn't find anyone else related to me to take care of me."

"Oh, Amy." Jean wrapped her arms around the girl. Amy pulled back, resisted a bit. Jean hugged her harder. "No, don't," she said. "Go ahead. Cry. You've held it back too long. Let it go, Amy." And the girl sobbed into Jean's shoulder as Hank gently examined her. By the time he finished, she had cried herself out and just sat quietly. Jean sat down beside her. "So how is she, Hank?"

"Well, she seems to have suffered no permanent damage in the paintball attack," the blue-furred doctor said. "Just bruises. Amy, we have instruments here that will remove that scar tissue from your body should you wish it."

Amy's eyes widened. "Really? You could do that?" she looked around. "Where are we, anyway?"

"Amy, look at me, sugah," Rogue said, staring intently into her eyes. Amy tried to follow the sound of her voice, but when Rogue moved suddenly and Amy was still staring emptily at the space she'd occupied before, they all realized why she wore such thick glasses. "Amy…you're blind?" 

Amy shrugged. "Pretty nearly," she said matter-of-factly. "The light from the fire was too bright, and my head was pinned by the wheelchair. I couldn't look at anything but the fire, and the doctors said the fire burned my lens or something. They couldn't fix it, so they just gave me glasses instead."

"Can you see with them?" Hank was now peering at the ruined lenses.

"Oh, yeah, I can see fine. Least, I used to. It's been getting worse the last couple of years because Headmaster Gilmore wouldn't get me new ones. But now that they're broken, maybe he'll let me get new ones."

"Years? How long have you had them? Have you had your vision checked by an optician lately?"

"Mmm. The accident happened four years ago, and I got those before I left the hospital, so it's been about four years since I had my eyes looked at."

Hank shook his head. "You should have had your eyes checked by an optical professional every year, at least, after such a traumatic accident happened," he said disapprovingly.

Amy bristled. "I would have if it had been up to me. If I had stayed at Pinewood I might have, too, the Headmistress was really kind to me. But Headmaster Gilmore couldn't care less. He keeps going on about how much everything costs."

"Hmm. Perhaps, as it is a smaller establishment, there are different rules for the allocation of funds," Hank said. "But you should have new ones. I will check your eyes before you return to the aforementioned establishment and have new glasses made for you."

Amy said warily, "I haven't any money. If I can't pay you, then why are you helping me?"

Rogue laughed. 'We're the X-Men, sugah. We help everybody."

Amy's eyes widened. "You're the—I've been—but—Miss Jean—I've been getting the Phoenix all dirty!" Horrified, she let go of Jean and scooted as far back from the redhead as possible.

Jean would have laughed if Amy's distress hadn't been so obvious. "Amy, it's all right," she said, dismissing the paint stains on her shirt with a wave. "There are more important things in life than dirt. And one of those," she said in mock sternness, wagging a finger at Amy, "is helping someone who needs to be helped. Sit back and let Hank check the rest of you over."

"I'm all right, really, I am," she said, refusing to lie back. "I've just got a headache from throwing up all night."

"What?" Jean said. "Were you sick?"

"Uh, well, " Amy looked suddenly nervous. "I tried to eat my dinner last night, but I couldn't. The meat looked like roadkill, and wasn't even half-cooked, and they used that tap water to make instant mashed potatoes, and it was all brown and gooey-looking. I couldn't eat it. Then Greg started to pick on me about not eating, and I told him to shove off. He grabbed my hair so hard it hurt. So I threw my food in his face. Headmaster gave me his usual lecture about wasting food and then brought out another plate of the stuff, and made me sit there until I ate it." She picked at a hangnail nervously. "I didn't have a choice but to eat it. I still had tons of homework to do. I spent the whole night throwing up. I was still sick this morning, that's how Greg, Dave, Howie, and Mark got to me this afternoon." She put a hand on her stomach. "Everything hurts right here," she said, "but at least I'm not throwing up anymore."

Jean turned to Hank. "Hank, can you do a full-spectrum blood test on her? When you get the results, let me know and we'll talk to Xavier. This mistreatment has to stop before they kill her."

"You're not going to talk to talk to Headmaster Gilmore, are you?" Amy looked panicked. "Please don't! If he finds out I've been talking I'll get in trouble!" She grabbed Jean's sleeve. "Please, please, don't, Miss Jean, please!" Jean flashed Hank a look over Amy's head, and he nodded. He grabbed a needle and slipped it into her arm. She was asleep before he finished injecting her. Jean lowered her to the table, and draped a sheet over her. "Please bring the results up when you have them, will you, Hank?" Jean said.

Hank nodded. "Certainly," he said. "I expect there will be a number of things about her living situation that will need to be corrected, based solely on her current physical condition. The blood test should tell us much more."

Jean turned to Rogue. "Can you arrange it so someone's with her at all times? If she wakes up unexpectedly she might try to sneak back into the orphanage, and we don't want that to happen until Charles has had a talk with the Headmaster."

"Sure." Rogue said. "Think Ah'll get Remy to watch her while Ah run up to the storage attics. Think we might have somea Jubilee's clothes still up there. Might fit her."

"Might be a good idea. I'm going to be talking to Charles upstairs." As she walked out of the medlab, she sent a thought up to Xavier. **Charles?**

In my study, Jean, he thought back to her. **How is Amy?** He sounded worried.

****

She could be a lot better, Jean said. **I'm coming up to talk to you, with Scott. Hank will be coming up with her blood test results as soon as he's done**.

****

I'm waiting. Jean broke the link, sent her thoughts in a different direction. **Scott?**

Yes, sweetheart?

Can you meet me in Charles' office? I'd like your feedback to some of the stuff I have to tell him.

On my way.


	5. Revelations

Chapter 5: Revelations

Jean closed the door with a telekinetic flick and dragged over two chairs for herself and Scott. "She's fine, firstly," she said, "from the stupid paintballs. She's not, however, fine physically. She let slip the fact that she was sick all last night because she was _forced_ to eat the stuff they cook using the dirty water. She's been sensible enough so far to avoid the cooking by simply not eating it, but last night when one of the boys made fun of her poor eating habits, she lost her temper and threw her plate into the boy's face. The headmaster brought her a new plate and made her sit there until she ate it. She didn't have a choice; she said she had homework to do, and I gather she wasn't going to be allowed to get up without having eaten it."

Scott made a noise of disgust and pity, and Xavier looked like he was going to be sick himself. "That's not all. She told me her parents died when she was very young, and her grandfather took her in. He died in a drunk driving accident four years ago. She and some friends were on their way back from somewhere when another car slammed into the one she and her grandfather was in. It caught fire. She was badly burned all over by the time the firemen got her out. When she woke up in the hospital she was nearly blind from her prolonged exposure to the flames, badly scarred from the fire that burned her, and grieving for her grandfather. To top all that off, she was told she would have to go into an orphanage because they couldn't locate any other relatives. Charles, can you imagine waking up in a hospital and being told that you don't have anyone anymore to love you, to care about you, and you have to go to an orphanage, and oh, by the way, you're almost blind, too?"

Xavier was shaking his head. "I can't imagine," he said gently. "Poor child."

There was a gentle tap at the door, and Hank's blue-furred head poked around the door. "Ready for the results of the blood test?" he said. From the expression on his face, Jean knew it wasn't going to be good news.

"Come on in, Hank," Xavier said.

Hank came in and sat in one of the chairs. It creaked under his weight, but didn't break, a testament to the sturdiness of its construction. "She's malnourished, which should come as no surprise, once one gives her a cursory visual examination," he said. "Her body is lacking calcium, vitamins A, B, B12, C, D, E, and every other vitamin for which there is a letter. I will not drag it out. Her blood pressure is eighty over forty, which, as every doctor knows, is dangerously low. She has very few white blood cells in her body. That means she has next to no immunity against anything that might hit her. She's lacking in iron, which she needs to build up her immune system." He paused.

"Now here are the odd things. She's got an old fracture of the left tibia—that's one of the lower leg bones—that never healed correctly. She also has, " he consulted the readout he held, "Four broken ribs, two of which were broken at least twice. A fracture of the right humerus, a fracture of her upper right thigh bone, a fractured jaw, and a hairline skull fracture. I checked the dating on some of these, and some can be attributed to the car accident that killed her grandfather, but most of these are recent." He took off his glasses. 

Xavier released a breath he didn't realize he was holding. "How recent?" he asked.

"Within the last two years recent," Hank said.

"Someone beat her that bad?" Jean looked like she was going to faint.

"No. They were inflicted at different times over the last couple of years. The most recent, I'd say, is actually the skull fracture. That's probably no more than a few months old."

Xavier propelled his hoverchair around his desk. "Can I speak to her?" he said.

Hank hesitated. "I had given her a sedative to allow her to sleep before Jean left," he said. "She was becoming insistent on your not calling the Headmaster of the orphanage, and allowing her to return. I decided it was best to allow her to sleep until you had decided what to do."

Xavier leaned back. "Until you came in, I was actually planning to allow her to return once I had warned the Headmaster to take better care of his charges and given her a chance to eat a decent meal and get a hot shower. Your information changes that, though. She is certainly not returning until I figure out where Mr. Gilmore came from, what he does, what his past is like, and I find out some more information about her as well. By all means, let her sleep. Scott, please instruct the others to take no calls from Mr. Gilmore until I say otherwise. I am going to try to find out what happened to her." He retreated to the computer behind his desk as the others left the room.

He blanked the computer screen, clearing it of all his work, then called up the DSL that ran into the mansion. When the search bar appeared, he typed in the name McCarly and waited to see what would appear.

Nothing. 

Mystified, he tried again. Still nothing.

He typed in 'Amy McCarly.' Nothing. When he tried again, his finger misspelled her name, and it went to the search engine as McClary. This time the screen filled up with news clippings and articles. He clicked on the first one, watched the page load. And there, on the screen, was a photo of a smiling, pretty, adorable little girl, about five or six, with the same dimple on her cheek that Amy had. He noted, with some amusement, that the picture had been taken by Peter Parker.

The caption on the article in the Daily Bugle read, "Tragic Fire Kills Two, Fire Deemed Suspicious." He read the article. 

_A fire swept through the suburban home of Edward and Mary McClary early yesterday morning, killing the couple as they slept in their beds. Neighbors awoke to the sound of screams and the sight of flames erupting from the upstairs rooms. The fire department was immediately called, but upon their arrival at the site, the fire chief declared the situation hopeless and no attempt was made to rescue the couple hopelessly trapped inside. The neighbors were standing around watching when they clearly saw a woman, badly burned, come stumbling out of the front door, carrying her screaming little girl, Amy, six, wrapped in a blanket soaked in water. Ambulances rushed the woman and child to Manhattan General, but the mother died en route. The little girl was treated for shock and smoke inhalation, and released to the custody of her maternal Grandfather by hospital officials. The cause of the fire has not been determined, but the fire department has tentatively labeled the fire as suspicious._

Edward and Mary were much-loved teachers at the local university, where Mary taught English Literature and Edward taught Biology. Their students say they will miss them very much.

Xavier printed out the article, hit the back button and clicked on the next article.

_The fire at the McClary house two months ago has officially been labeled an accident, although there are some aspects of it which has fire investigators puzzled. The fire started in the child's room, in some faulty wiring in a light socket to which a child's night-light was plugged. The fire spread quickly throughout the house; as Amy was dressed when she arrived at the hospital but her mother was not, officials concluded that she may have had time to put on clothes and go to wake her parents up. There were also large swathes of floor untouched by fire leading from the upstairs bedrooms where they were sleeping to the front door. One investigator said that it looked as though someone or something had tried to keep the fire at bay so that the occupants could escape. There was no one else in the house at the time, however, and autopsies on the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. McClary showed no evidence of their being mutants._

Fire investigators attempted to speak with the McClary's daughter, Amy, who survived miraculously unscathed, but she still lies in a semi-comatose state in her grandfather's home in upstate New York. Though Mr. Howard Ferguson is a paraplegic, he has not felt inconvenienced by his granddaughter's presence. "My daughter's husband's parents are helping me," he said.

Xavier clicked the back button, puzzled. The photos were definitely Amy; the two others were definitely her parents. There was enough of a family resemblance to be reasonably sure. So why was Amy's name now McCarly, and not McClary? And from this article, she had loving relatives, a grandmother and grandfather on her father's side. When had her name been changed, who had done it, and why?

He printed out the second article, clicked on the next one, and was confronted by another picture of Amy, smiling, in the arms of an elderly man in a wheelchair with a kind smile. There was a definite resemblance here, too. This was her grandfather, then, her mother's father. He read the headline. "McClary Girl Awakens From Three Month Coma; It's a Medical Miracle; Doctors Elated." This was from some medical journal, and involved a great deal of medical jargon. He printed it anyway, mostly for Hank's benefit, and went on.

"Drunk Driver Brings Tragedy to Young Girl" said the next article's caption. He read it.

_Tragedy has struck young Amy McClary again, this time in the form of the death of her beloved grandfather. Young Amy McClary was on her way back from an audition at Juilliard, as part of their Aspiring Artists program. They were in a jubilant mood, Amy having just been accepted into the program as an exceptionally talented young ballerina. At the intersection of Madison and Fifth a drunk driver ran a red light and slammed into the lift-equipped van carrying Amy, her grandfather, her friend, Michelle Matera, and her mother, Allison Matera. The Materas and Howard Ferguson, Amy's grandfather, died instantly, but Amy herself remained trapped. The van was in flames and rescuers could hear her screaming inside as they tried to cut her out of the wreckage. She was finally freed, and onlookers were horrified to see that she appeared to be on fire. Firemen rolled her on the ground to douse the flames, then an ambulance took her to a local hospital, where Social Services informs us she is in serious but stable condition._

Xavier clicked on the next article. This one was short.

_The paternal grandparents of a little girl named Amy McClary wish to trace her whereabouts. Amy is described as a slender, graceful little girl, a born dancer, with short black hair and brown eyes. She is about 3'2", ten years old, slightly nearsighted due to her love of books. Amy was last seen being checked into Manhattan General after a Car accident killed her other grandparent, Howard Ferguson. She was never checked out of the hospital, yet a thorough search has not revealed her anywhere on the hospital premises. Her doctor, a Mr. Harvey Gilmore, assures us he would not have released her to anyone who did not show proper identification. If you have seen this little girl anywhere please call 555-2398. Reward offered. Or call 1-800-THE MISSING if you wish to remain anonymous._

Xavier stared at the words on the screen, mind racing. Harvey Gilmore was the clue to all of this, then. How had he gotten from the doctor of a Manhattan hospital to this, administrator of an orphanage? How had he managed to change Amy's name from her given to the one she now believed was hers? How had he gotten her to believe it?

And what was he going to do with her? Because Xavier could see why he wanted her. Amy must be an Alpha-class mutant, to have been able to hold back the fire for so long, to put on her own clothes, go wake her parents and try to get them out of the house. At only five years old, no less! Hers was a formidable ability, and one that needed careful handling. What would he want her for? 

He realized that the other McClary's the search had turned up must be other people. He blanked the search bar, typed in 'Harvey Gilmore'.

The search engine came back with over five thousand results. Xavier sighed. This wouldn't get him anywhere. A sudden inspiration seized him, and he typed in 'Pinewood Orphanage'.

A description of the establishment came up, a brief history, then he clicked on 'Waiting to be Adopted' and scrolled down to the M's. There was a picture of Amy, with a line through the picture, and her description was replaced with the words, "_Social Services worker Mr. Harvey Gilmore has said that this_ _child is not available for adoption at this time_."

Xavier blew out his breath. Maybe he would have to search all those Harvey Gilmores.

There was a tap on the door, and Scott and Jean stood there, in his-and-hers matching light green satin pajamas. Scott held a steaming mug, and Jean held two similar cups, one of which she held out to him. "Scott and I couldn't sleep," she said quietly. "We went to make some tea, and I thought you could use some too. Have you found anything yet?"

"Plenty," Xavier sighed. "But it seems to raise more questions than it answers. Did you know her parents died in a house fire? She was five. She held the fire at bay while she tried to wake her parents and get them out of the house. Her mother made it out holding her, but died on the way to the hospital."

"Five years old?" Scott read the article Xavier printed. "Wow. Too early, Charles, her powers manifested way too early. She's got to be an Alpha-class by now."

Jean picked up the second printed article. "So her grandfather died in a car crash. Charles, the end of the article says the fire started inside the car. Do you think she was so grief-stricken she tried to burn herself?"

Xavier took back the paper. He read the last paragraph. "It seems like that to me," he said grimly.

Scott looked at the last paper. "She disappeared? How does a hospital lose a patient?"

"They didn't," Xavier told him. "The doctor changed all her patient information and turned her over to social services. From this," he handed Scott the latest printout, "It looks like Harvey Gilmore is a chameleon. First he was a doctor at the hospital; then a Social Services worker. Now it looks like he's the Headmaster of the orphanage next door. The question is, what has he been doing? For the last four years, during the time Amy's gotten all those injuries, where has she been, and what has he been doing to her? Why is he chasing her?" he sighed.

Jean looked at the Harvey Gilmores on the screen. "He could be any one of those," she said. "Did you try and see if he has a police record?"

"No, I didn't, Jean, you're a genius." He typed, "New York State Police Records."

A message came up. _If you are searching for the record of a specific individual, please enter all known information about the person into the fields below._

Xavier typed in 'Harvey' in the first name field, and 'Gilmore' in the last name field, and waited. The screen suddenly came up full of print. Scott and Jean both leaned over his shoulder, tea and sleep forgotten. "Robbery," Jean said after a moment. "I never knew there were so many different kinds or types or degrees of robbery."

"But look," Scott said, "it's all suspected's. He hasn't been convicted of any of them except of that last one." He reached over Xavier's shoulder to point at the screen. "Sorry, Charles--"

"It's okay," he said, sitting back.

"—and look, he did nine months for that four years ago. That was right after he'd spirited Amy out of the hospital. Someone must have taken over his 'cases' and placed Amy in an orphanage when no one could find any relatives under the name McCarly. It looks like when he go out he went straight back to pursuing her. Found her in the orphanage, kidnapped her, for lack of a better word, and took her…where? Where did he take her? There's a big gap there, Charles, four years worth."

"I'm planning to ask Amy that tomorrow morning," Xavier said, collecting the scattered sheets of printout and organizing them. "I don't think there's anything else I can find in the computer. Maybe something will occur to me tonight." He switched off the computer, mildly surprised to find he'd been on it for almost four hours, and looked at the clock. Almost midnight. He looked at Jean. "How is she? Have you checked?"

Jean looked at him in consternation. "Charles! Of course I've checked!" Then she laughed. "Yes, I have," she said. "A few minutes ago. Logan was keeping an eye on her in the medlabs. Hank's gone to bed to catch some sleep. He'll take over for Ororo after she takes over for Logan. I asked Rogue to work out a schedule so she wouldn't be left unguarded, or she'll sneak back into the orphanage. And judging from what we found out so far, if Gilmore finds out where she's been, we'll probably never see her again."

"Is she all right?" Xavier asked.

Jean sat down and sipped her tea. "Yes, she is. Remember, Charles, she spent all last night throwing up because she got sick from the dirty water at the house. You know what she called the meal she had? Roadkill meat."

"Jean," Scott groaned at his wife. "What an image to take with me to bed!"

Jean shrugged. "Sorry, but that's what she said," she shrugged. "And really, if you're grossed out by the description, how do you think she felt about being forced to actually eat it?"

"I would have gotten sick at the table," Scott made a face. "The orphanage I grew up in was pretty awful, but not like that. This is inhuman. Poor Amy."

Xavier stretched his arms, yawned, and finished off the last of his tea. "I will be going to bed, Jean," he said. "No, don't worry about the cup, Jean, I'll drop it off in the kitchen on my way down to the medlabs tomorrow morning. Goodnight, Scott." And he went through the door in his office wall that led into his bedroom.

As he undressed, turned off the lights, slid into bed, and powered off the hoverchair, he thought regretfully about the little volume of Shakespeare that Amy prized so highly, and the fragile, precious letter it contained. He had no intention of allowing her to return to the orphanage. She would lose the book she loved. He hoped she would forgive him when she met her father's parents. He hoped they were still alive; a lot of things could happen in four years. He thought, rather regretfully, that he should have kept it. Then she would have it here and she wouldn't be tempted to go back. 

Well, tempted or not, she wouldn't be going back. He wouldn't allow her to. 

With that comforting thought, he drifted off into sleep.


	6. Memories

Chapter 6: Memories

Amy awoke to the soft sound of falling rain. She lay with her eyes closed for a moment, unwilling to get up. Her bed was so comfortable, and warm, and she wanted to stay in it, but she knew the staff would soon be waking the kids up for another day of work in this awful house. She twitched her thumb with her eyes still closed, to see if the welt felt any better. She felt something strange; a bandage over her whole hand. Surprised, she lifted it, staring stupidly at the soft white gauze. Then sleep fled her mind as she remembered where she was, and she sat up.

Beside the bed, an exotic-looking, statuesque African woman with long, pretty silver hair looked up from the book she was reading. Amy found herself staring into the ice-blue eyes of someone she'd always hoped to meet but never thought she actually would; the X-Man the newspeople called Storm. Still sleep-befuddled, she said the first thing that came to mind. "Wow. You're Storm!"

"Ororo Munroe," said the woman, chuckling a bit and putting down her book, "but most of my friends prefer calling me 'Ro. It is shorter." She pushed the book aside on the low table beside her and pulled forward a covered tray. "It has only been a half an hour since we had breakfast, so I trust the food should still be warm." She lifted the cover, and a cloud of steam rolled off the huge plate of eggs, sausage, warm oatmeal, and toast. Amy stared at it all, her mouth watering. She couldn't remember the last time she had eaten like this!

"One moment," Ororo said as Amy reached for the eggs. Amy snatched her hand away, suddenly fearful that she had done something wrong, but Ororo put a cup of warm milk in her hand and a small plastic cup with an assortment of pills in it in her other hand. "Hank informed me you were to take those first," she said.

Amy stared at the blue, white, brown and yellow pills in the cup. "What are they?" she asked suspiciously.

Storm picked up her tea and cradled it in her hands as she watched the girl eye the pills in the cup. "The yellow and blue pills are vitamins, I believe," she said. "The brown is an iron supplement, and the white, I think, is aspirin for your pain."

"Pain?" Amy put the milk down, and flexed her hand. "It doesn't hurt anymore."

"He believed that your throat and stomach might still be sore from being sick the night previous," Ororo said.

"Oh." Amy took a deep breath, and winced as sore stomach muscles made themselves felt. "Yes, they are." She obediently swallowed the vitamins. "Look, um, this isn't going to make me ill, is it?" she said anxiously. "I heard that large doses of vitamins all at once can make people sick, and I almost got in trouble yesterday because I kept throwing up. If I throw up while I'm working today Mr. Fry will really be upset."

"The doses are not sufficiently large to cause your stomach to become upset," Storm said, outwardly calm, though she tensed inwardly as she chose her next words carefully. "And you will not be returning to the orphanage. Charles has forbidden it."

"But I have to go back! The State made them my legal guardians! I have to go back!"

"There are ways around the red tape, child. Charles will find a way. All he needs to do is bring up before a review board your current physical condition and living arrangements, and you will not have to go back."

"You don't understand! I have to go back--"

"Why?" Ororo regarded the girl calmly. "Why must you go back? You cannot wish to return there, given your untenable housing and inadequate nutrition."

"I …I don't know," Amy blinked, confused. "I just got this feeling that they need me there for something, that I have to be there. I don't know why."

The door opened, and Jean's head poked around the door. "'Ro, if that breakfast sits there any longer it'll get cold—oh, Amy, you're awake! Good, Charles needs to talk to you. No, no, don't get up, stay there, he's coming down here." She sent a thought questing through the mansion to Charles, got an affirmative answer, and sat down in a chair beside Storm. "Now go on, eat up," she said. "It's nice to see you awake."

Amy took a bite of the warm, steaming scrambled eggs, savored the taste with her eyes closed as she chewed and swallowed. They vanished in short order. The sausage followed, and she was nibbling on a piece of toast when Xavier came in.

"Good morning, Amy," he said, smiling as he saw her wide-eyed gaze take in the hovering transport he used in the mansion. She stared for a long moment, and shook her head. 

"Grandfather would have loved to have something like that," she said with a touch of sadness.

"What was his name?" Xavier asked, figuring that was as good a place to start as any.

"Howard. Howard Ferguson," she said. "Why?"

Xavier didn't answer her, looking down at the sheets of printout he'd brought down with him. "Did anyone ever ask you if you had any other relatives?"

Amy looked puzzled. "No."

"Did anyone ever tell you if you have any other relations?"

Amy shook her head. "If I have any, then they don't want me," she said quietly, putting down the toast. "Why are you asking?"

Xavier handed her the article about the accident, the car fire, and her rush to the hospital. Amy read the article silently, eyes wide. "It's not me. Oh, God, it can't be," she said with the air of someone sinking in a bog trying desperately to believe they were standing on firm ground. "How could I have forgotten my own name?" She looked at Xavier with tearing eyes.

"That's what I'd like to find out," he said. He leaned forward. "Amy, Jean and I…we are both telepaths. If you will allow us, we can enter your mind, find the memories that you may have forgotten in shock, or trauma--"

He stopped, because she was shaking her head violently, looking terrified. "No," she whispered, "Please, no," she said.

Jean said, "Amy, we won't hurt you. You won't feel a thing. All you have to do is let us in--"

"That's what he said," she whispered, terrified.

He who? And why was she so afraid? Xavier sent Jean a puzzled look. "He who?"

"I…I don't know," Amy said, frowning. "I don't remember. I just think…just know…that I don't like telepaths. I'm scared. Please don't," she said, beginning to sob.

Ororo sat on the bed behind the weeping child, hugging her tight. "They will not enter your mind without permission," she assured the girl. "But Amy, there is nothing to be afraid of. They have done so to me many times in the past, when necessity demanded it, and it has never hurt me."

Amy turned to look at the lovely black woman. "Are you sure?" she asked. Her tear-stained face looked so pathetic, Storm hastened to reassure her. "Quite sure," she said.

Amy looked uncertainly at them. "I guess I'll try," she said bravely, pushing her fear deep into herself. "What do I have to do?"

"Relax," Xavier said, "And close your eyes. Try to imagine a door in your mind. Open that door, and we'll be able to come in."

Amy closed her eyes as she was instructed, willed herself to relax. After a moment, she felt something brush her mind, a light, gentle, tentative touch. She 'opened' that door in her mind, felt Xavier and Jean 'walk' through.

Xavier had always thought of a mind as being like a long corridor, with memories hidden behind doors. He and Jean wandered through, looking through the memories. A home, with two loving parents. Birthday parties, school days, the basic disagreements between parent and child, a happy life. Then the terrible fire. 

Amy's mind grabbed that memory, looked at it again, and Xavier and Jean watched it too.

_They stood in a corner of a child's pink and white room, watching the little girl sleep. A sudden noise roused the girl, and she sat up, in time to see flames erupt from the wall around her pink nightlight. She stared at it, shocked, as it climbed with surprising rapidity up the walls and crept across the floor, surrounding her in a ring of flames. She smelled smoke. _

"Mommy! Daddy!" she screamed, but they didn't answer. Terrified, the child climbed into the pants and shirt that had been set out at the foot of her bed for school the next day and faced the fire. A look of concentration crossed her face, and she held her hand to the fire. It didn't move.

Flames engulfed her bed, and she jumped back. She screamed in terror as the fire ate up the intervening space in between the walls of flame, and closed in on her. As a tongue of fire licked at her pant cuff, she turned and ran through the fire behind her, not even noticing that the flames parted for her.

**She had to control them, or die herself,** Jean observed to Charles silently. **So that's how she learned to work with fire.**

**Too much, too early,** Xavier agreed. They watched as the little girl held the fire away from her as she woke her parents, but as her mother was in the bathroom getting a blanket wet in the tub, more flames broke out in the canopy over their bed. She couldn't hold it all back. Flames engulfed her father in the bed The child looked at him, anguished by the screams, and diverted her attention to the flames on the bed. Then her mother screamed as fire erupted in the bathroom. She stumbled out, on fire, and the child, seeing her mother as the only way out, doused the flames as the blanket was wrapped tightly around her. Unable to see anything in the wet folds, she had to go by memory of what the house looked like as the screaming, badly-burned mother carried the child out of the house.

Amy was lost in an agony of guilt and self-recrimination as she watched herself let her father die. Xavier and Jean both knew as soon as the flames swallowed the bed there was nothing anyone could have done to save him, but it was small comfort for the child who felt it was her own fault. The fourteen-year old watching the memory knew it wasn't her fault, but still felt guilty. Jean soothed Amy's agitated mind as Xavier told her firmly that it wasn't her fault, and planted that assurance around the terrible memory. That done, they went on until Xavier found a blank spot in her memory.

When he and Jean looked closer, they found it wasn't really a blank spot, but a shadow-shrouded area of her mind locked away from her. It had a strange psychic signature to it, one they didn't recognize, but it had been inexpertly done. Xavier broke the 'lock' easily and they saw what was inside.

_Amy opened her eyes, to see a huge, burly man in a white lab coat standing at the end of her bed, beside a boy some few years older than she. They were blurry and indistinct, due to the damage to her eyes, but she knew this wasn't her doctor, Doctor Graves. "Who are you?" she said to the hazy figures._

"My name is Harvey Gilmore," said the man. "This is my son Greg. We need you."

"Huh?" she said, confused.

"I'm going to rob a bank," the man said. "I need you to create a fire after me, to cover my tracks. I need you. You're going to let Greg here alter your thoughts, because I can't have your father's parents coming here to get you. You're Amy McCarly now."

"No!" the girl on the bed struggled, but she was too weak and in too much pain from the accident to fight. Greg fastened his hands to her head, to her temples, and her mouth opened in a cry of pain, denial, and anguish. Then she went limp, and Greg took his hands away. "Okay, Dad," he said. "Her name's changed. She won't remember anything about her parents or her former life."

Xavier watched. It was a terrible violation of all the mental ethics he'd set in place for himself, the mental rules he tried to instill into all his X-Men gifted with mental abilities. To invade someone's mind, alter their memories and their very identities, all against their will…it was a violation of everything he believed.

Amy closed her mind, suddenly, and Xavier and Jean both found themselves back in their own bodies, blinking at the suddenness of it. "Amy," Jean said, "I know this isn't easy, but you have to let us back in. We need to find out why he did it."

Amy was sitting up in bed, shaking, her fists clenched. "All I have to do is go ask him," she snarled.

"Don't, Amy," Xavier said. "I think he may have altered more of your memories. I need to find out what they were, and why."

She dropped her fists. "How do you know?" she asked.

"Did you ever wake up with an ache, pain or injury you couldn't remember getting?" he asked her.

She shrugged. "Lots of times," she said.

"While you were asleep, Hank did a full checkup on you, at my request. You have a number of injuries that we can't explain. Did you know you have a skull fracture? It's fairly recent. So are two broken ribs and a broken leg. How did you get those?"

"I don't know," she said, and dropped her inner barriers to let them in again.

This time Xavier knew what to look for. He found another of those disturbing locked spots in her mind and got into it.

_They were standing on the pavement outside a bank, at night. The street was nearly deserted. Greg Gilmore, Harvey Gilmore, and seven other boys were watching Amy burn a hole through the side of the bank wall. "Make it larger," Harvey snapped at her, poking her in the shoulder._

"I can't," she gasped, perspiring from the effort of keeping up the flames for so long.

"I can't fit into it yet, dad," Greg snapped. Harvey Gilmore poked Amy in the shoulder. 

"Get on with it. Don't tell me what you can't do," he snapped at her. Amy continued to burn through the wall until the hole was about waist high on her, and then collapsed. "I can't make it any bigger," she moaned. "Please. I'm tired."

"It'll have to do," Gilmore said. "Stefan, Lucas, get in. Stefan, phase Lucas through the wall. Pick up as much of the cash as you can; Luke, use your mass-shifting ability to lighten the load. You'll get more that way."

Shortly afterward, the boys came out, each carrying huge sacks of money lightened by Luke's power. Amy stared in helpless misery. "This is wrong," she sighed. "I'm not doing this." She got up to walk away.

Shawn started after her, grabbed her arm, and jerked her back. "You can't tell on us," he warned her, his fist clenched. "You'll be in trouble, too."

"Sure I can," she snorted, pulling her arm out of his grasp. "I don't care where I go, as long as I'm away from all of you."

He swung back his fist and hit her. As his fist connected with the side of her head, there was a crackle of power. She flew backward as his projectile power propelled her backward into the brick wall opposite the alley from the bank. She crashed into it, cried out as her head impacted with the wall, and she moaned in pain as she fell own the wall. 

Xavier stared. So that was how she'd gotten the skull fracture. And that was the secret. Gilmore was using mutant children to rob banks! It was clever, ingenious, and terrifying. How many times had he done this so far, and had his son wipe Amy's memories?

**Five times,** Jean said. **They've robbed five banks. I checked some of the other locked spots in her mind. Gilmore seems to be the ringleader of the group, but the boys help. Amy seems to be the only one not okay with this. They've been wiping her memory clean on a regular basis after one of these jobs…right before they move to find another location to rob.**

There were considerably fewer locked spots when Xavier and Jean looked again. Xavier got into one of the last ones.

_Greg Gilmore stood over her, grinning in the darkness as he shook Amy's arm "Wake up," he snorted. "We got a job for you. Some kid down at the corner drugstore made fun of me. You're gonna go set fire to his house."_

"I am not!" Amy looked horrified. 

"Do it or I'll beat you up," Stefan said.

Amy pulled the covers back over her head.

Greg yanked the covers off her and grabbed her arm, dragging her out of the bed. She hit the floor with a thump.

"Let me go!" she yelped.

Stefan's fist punched her face. She cried out in pain, stars exploding in her vision. Then he pulled his foot back where she crouched on the floor and kicked her hard. There was a sickening crunch, and she screamed in agony as two of her ribs broke. Her screams woke the rest of the house, and Headmaster Gilmore came running in. "What's this! What did you do, McCarly!?"

She pointed a finger at the boys silently, her ribs hurting too badly for her to speak. Gilmore reached for her arm, tried to pull her up, but she screamed as her broken ribs shifted in her body. Gilmore was angry. "Get Mr. Garber to bandage her ribs," he snapped to Stefan. "Greg, wipe her memory. Then I want to see you boys in my office."

Xavier broke off the link. So Greg Gilmore was wiping her memory not only to cover the crimes they were committing, but also to cover up the petty bullying and beatings they were giving her too.

"I think," he said slowly, "that I had better have a talk with Mr. Gilmore. Then I'm going to talk with the police."

Ororo sat, hugging Amy, who was crying into her toast and oatmeal. Jean got up, got a box of tissues off a nearby counter and handed it to her as she took the now-soggy toast and oatmeal. "Shall I call the police?"

Xavier shook his head. "As much as I'd like to turn him in, I seriously doubt they'll take our word for it. All we have is what I've seen in Amy's mind, and no one will take that as evidence. No, I'm going to tell him we've found out what he's doing and why, and tell him to return all the children he's collected. Amy will stay here until we've managed to trace her father's parents. Amy, you are not to go back to the orphanage, all right? Stay here. I'll speak to you after I talk to Mr. Gilmore."


	7. Discussion

Chapter 7: Discussion

Xavier picked up the telephone and dialed the number to the orphanage next door. It rang twice, then someone answered it. "Blackstone Orphanage."

"This is Charles Xavier at the Institute," he said. "I need to speak with Headmaster Gilmore concerning one of his students."

There was a moment of silence at the other end of the line, then a new voice, a familiar one, came on the line. "This is Headmaster Gilmore, I am so pleased to finally speak with you," he gushed. "One of my students has gone missing from the orphanage, yes she did. I believe she might be hiding somewhere on your grounds, so if you really don't mind…oh, I'm sure you don't…I'd like to search for her, I really would…"

"Headmaster Gilmore," Xavier interrupted the flow of words abruptly. "I know about the child of whom you speak. She is here, a guest at my school, and she will remain so. She will not be returning to your establishment while I can still prevent it. I have learned some interesting things about you and your doings from her which lead me to believe she is not safe with you. Come here, and we will discuss it."

There was silence for a moment, then Gilmore's voice filled his ear. No longer oily and filled with mock pleasantness, the voice was now cold and flat. "She can't have told you anything."

Xavier insisted, "I refuse to discuss this any further with you over the phone. Come here and we will discuss it."

There was more silence. "I will be there soon." The line went dead.

Xavier set the phone down, and flicked a thought toward his students; one in particular. **Nathan.**

Downstairs in the rec room cleaning and loading his guns with Bishop, Nathan Summers, Scott and Jean's son from a possible future timeline, froze, 'listening' to that inner voice. **Yes, Charles?**

I am expecting company shortly. Please greet our...guest…at the door and escort him up to my study.

Nathan, also known as Cable, smiled grimly. **Amy's headmaster, Charles?**

**Yes.** Xavier answered him.

Nathan stood up from the table, snapping a loaded clip into the chamber of his gun. **I would much rather be killing him than allowing him to enter, Charles. Such things Jean's told us he's made her do…It's terrible, to force a child to do things she doesn't want to do.**

**Yes, it is. And he won't be doing it anymore.** Xavier's mindvoice was determined. **I plan on having a chat with him. Please bring him up when he arrives.**

**Will do, Charles,** Nathan answered.

Xavier called Jean next. **Jean,** he said. **Mr. Gilmore will be arriving here momentarily. Please bring Amy up to my study.**

**She's going to be there when he arrives? She's going to watch while you question him?** There was doubt in Jean's mindvoice. **Are you sure that's wise?**

Xavier sent an affirmative thought. **I don't really want to, Jean. But when I bring him up in front of the Social Services review board, I don't want him to say that I've been putting words in her mouth. I want him to see that she's not under his control anymore, that she's doing this of her own accord.**

He felt Jean's nod. **All right, Charles. We're both coming.**

Jean opened the door and let Amy walk in first, pulling up a chair for her first, then one for herself. Amy sat in front of Charles's desk, her hands wrapped so tightly around a mug of hot chocolate that her fingers were white. He noticed. "Amy, if you'd rather not be here…" he began.

She shook her head vehemently. "I want to, Mr. Xavier," she said. "I want him to know that I know what he's done. I want him to know that the decision to not come back was mine, and not you telling me what to do. I have to stop being afraid of him."

The soft chime of the front doorbell sounded throughout the mansion, and Xavier felt all activity through the great house stop. Maybe it was his imagination, but the temperature of the house felt as though it had dropped a few degrees, as the cold anger of a dozen minds permeated the psychic atmosphere. Even Amy gave a slight shudder, as if she felt the change as well, even though she wasn't a telepath. Then, **Charles. Mr. Gilmore's here,** said Nathan telepathically.

Mr. Gilmore knocked at the heavy wooden front door a couple of times before he saw the doorbell. He pressed it, waited for a moment, then pressed it again. He waited with some impatience as the door swung slowly back. He was prepared for almost anything, but expected to see a starched, pressed butler on the other side of the door.

He was, therefore, disconcerted when the first thing he saw was an enormous chest. He blinked. He was tall; he didn't know what to call this brute. His eyes traveled up the bulging chest muscles, barely contained in an oversized T-shirt, to the thick biceps, and took in the thick neck before he stopped at the face. And felt his jaw drop.

The mountainous man had silver hair, cut shaggily but still reminiscent of a military style, and his face looked as though it had been carved in granite. One eye was completely normal; the other was a fiercely glowing orb of yellow light. Harvey Gilmore suddenly felt much less confident. "Uh, I'm here to see Mr. Charles Xavier?.." he trailed off uncertainly as the mountain in front of him stared stonily at him. 

Could the man hear? "I'm here to see Mr. Xavier," he said again, enunciating his words slowly and carefully. "Are you deaf?"

The mountain moved. "I heard you fine," he rumbled menacingly, and Harvey Gilmore took a step backward, intimidated. "Come this way." The man turned and stalked away, and Gilmore thought rather hysterically that the floor was probably reinforced. There was no way this behemoth could stand on it otherwise.

Down a hall, down another, and up a flight of steps. Gilmore was trying to memorize the way in, but after a couple of twists and stairs, he was completely lost. 

In front of him, Nathan was smiling grimly to himself. He was doing this on purpose; the more roundabout way they took to Charles's study, the more difficult it would be for Gilmore to try to break into the mansion to steal Amy away. He led the man through the east wing, down through the servants' rooms, and then up the main stairway and down the corridor to Xavier's door. He had passed it several times already, but the man he was escorting was so bewildered he doubted if he recognized the hallway.

Nate opened the door to Charles's office and showed his charge in. "Mr. Gilmore is here."

The dry twinkle in Charles's eye was the only betrayer of his amusement as Gilmore came in. His face remained perfectly calm. **Please remain,** Xavier said to him. **Mr. Gilmore won't be here long.**

Nate came in after Gilmore and sat down in the chair by the door, instinct making him pull the chair just close enough to Jean and Amy to keep Gilmore from touching the little girl.

Gilmore walked into the study, staring at the elegant but tasteful décor, and gritted his teeth. Forget the bank. This man Xavier probably had more money than any bank. He let his gaze travel around the room until it stopped at the two chairs in front of the desk, and he recognized the occupants. The red-haired woman named…Summers, that was it. And in the chair beside her was his wayward pyromaniac.

He took two steps forward, grabbed the girl's arm. "Go home," he snarled at her, fury filling his face as he yanked her out of the chair. "Get home at once! You will be punished severely for this. Go home!"

The woman took Amy's other arm and drew her out of Gilmore's grasp. "She won't. How would you punish her, huh? Starve her, beat her up, make her work? You've already done that. There's not a lot left you haven't done. You've hurt her enough!" Jean wrapped her arms protectively around Amy, who was shaking now in fear.

Gilmore spluttered for a moment, angry. "How dare you speak to me that way, you bitch!" He raised his hand and slapped Jean's face as hard as he could.

Jean didn't even have time to react. Nate rose from his chair by the door and descended on the man, every muscle in his body tight with anger. His hand came down on the man's face, slapping him exactly as Gilmore had struck Jean a moment earlier. Gilmore's head snapped around on his neck, and there was a dazed look on his face when he looked around again. Nate loomed over him, hands not quite touching the man but looking as though he might at any moment. "Don't you dare," he said, speaking carefully around his gritted teeth, "touch anyone in this house again. Least of all my…"

**Nate!** Xavier said warningly in his head. He bit off the rest of his words and turned away from the man cowering in front of him, walking over to where Jean stood beside Amy. 

****

Are you okay, Mom? He asked her telepathically, on a private thread only he and she could 'hear'. Jean knew he was worried; he only called her 'Mom' when he was worried about her, and only telepathically.

Jean nodded, smiling weakly. **I'm fine, thank you, Nate,** she said. Nate brushed a strand of her hair away from her cheek, looked at the bruise. **Dad's going to be furious,** he warned her.

He heard her mental sigh. **He always is when I get hurt,** she said. **It'll be all right.**

Xavier spoke to Gilmore. "Sit down, Mr. Gilmore. What I have to say will be brief. We know what you've done. We know you've been using the mutant children to rob banks, and using the orphanage as a front. And you've been getting your son to hide Amy's memories. That stops now. Jean is a gifted telepath, she's undone all the mental damage you did by getting your son to suppress her memories. Amy will remain here while we track down the relatives you made her forget, and she will be returned to them. You will return the children to the orphanages they came from."

"And if I don't want to?"

"You'll do it," Xavier said. "If you don't, I will turn you into the authorities myself. How much do you think they'd like to get their hands on the perpetrators of the mysterious bank robberies? And with your prior convictions, what do you think your parole officer will say? What will the D.A. say?"

Gilmore stared at him. "You wouldn't tell on me," he said in disbelief. "If you do the mutant children will go to jail too."

"I'm willing to risk it," Amy said bitterly. "If I do go to jail it will only be for having listened to you, to what you told me to do. I'm ashamed that I did; if I have to go to jail then I'll go if it means I stop you." She was silent for a moment. "The other kids didn't need to be coerced, so they deserve it too. Greg loved it, robbing banks, and then wiping my memories. In fact," she said, turning to him, "He beat me up several times, then blocked my memories of what he did. You didn't know that, did you," she raged at him. "Your son is a cruel, sadistic little bastard. Go home? I'm not going home! Your orphanage was never home to me, it was a prison, a jail. Anywhere would be better than there!" she tore away from Jean's grasp and ran out of the room.

Xavier was silent for a moment. "She is going to stay here. She won't be returning to your orphanage. Now get out of my house."

Gilmore looked as though he were about to say something, but Nate stepped forward, and one look at the tall man made Gilmore change his mind about whatever he was planning to say. 'This isn't over yet," he hissed at Xavier as he stalked out.

When he was gone, Xavier sighed and looked at Jean. 'That's over. Jean, are you all right? I wasn't expecting him to do anything like that—I'm sorry--"

Jean touched the tender spot on her cheek, and winced. "I've had worse happen," she said cheerfully. "I'm going to go get some ice before this swells too much, and then I'll go find Amy. I'll see you at dinner, if there's nothing else…?"

"Go on," Xavier said, and she left his study.

Moments later, Nate poked his head back in the door. "He's gone, Charles. I gave him the long tour of the mansion. He won't be able to find his way back in even if he could get past the outer defenses."

"Thank you, Nathan. I am sorry that happened; I wasn't expecting it, and I know how much you hate seeing your mother and father get hurt."

Nate smiled a little sadly. "If Jean and Scott could make the jump into the future and raise me, keep me alive all that time through everything that happened, then they'll survive this stuff. I might hate it, but my parents can take care of themselves." Both men were silent for a moment, then Nate said, "Jean's gone to find Scott. Bet he's going to have a fit. Where's Amy?"

Xavier said, "Ororo showed her the spare room I gave her until we find her relatives. Amy's in there right now."

"Okay. I want to talk to her. Thanks, Charles." Nate's head disappeared.

Amy was sitting on her bed staring off into space when there came a tap at her door. She looked up as Nate opened it and stuck his head in. "Hey. Want to talk?"

She shrugged, and Nate took that as permission and walked in. "He's gone, Amy. He won't bother you again."

She remained sitting on her bed. "You love Miss Jean."

Nate grinned and sat on the end of the bed. "I do, but not the way I think you're thinking. Jean's my mother, Amy. I come from a time far in the future. Jean and Scott are my parents; when I was born I was infected with a virus, for which there wasn't a cure. A woman named Mother Askani took me into the future to get a cure for the virus and save my life. When she couldn't find suitable parents for me she came back, stole Jean and Scott, and brought them to my time. I knew them growing up as Slim and Redd." Better not to mention that Mother Askani was really his sister Rachel from another possible timeline. That would confuse the girl more. "The future I grew up in was really rough. I eventually came back in time to alter some things that happened in this point in time so that the time I grew up in would never happen, and met Jean and Scott, and the rest of the X-Men. I didn't find out until later that they were my real parents. They're my mother and father, Amy."

Amy turned to look at him. "Somehow I can't see you as a baby, Mr. Nathan."

"Oh, I was," he said. "And Jean and Scott still baby me sometimes too." He chuckled. "They baby each other. I bet that's what Scott's doing right now."

Scott blinked, shocked, as Jean came in the kitchen where he, Storm and Remy were cooking dinner. "Jean!" he pulled out a chair for her, and went to the freezer for a couple of ice cubes as Storm got a plastic baggie from the kitchen drawer. He dumped the ice into it and wrapped a clean towel around the makeshift ice pack as she seated herself at the table. 'What happened?"

"Mr. Gilmore took a swing at me," Jean said as Scott applied the ice pack o the swelling under her eye. "I was trying to get Amy out of his way."

Scott spluttered in fury for a moment. "I can't believe the nerve," he snapped. "I'd like to…"

"Don't worry," Jean's eyes twinkled. "Nate slapped him right back. He's got the same bruise I have."

"Good," Scott said grimly. "This looks nasty," he winced as Jean twitched. "Sorry," he apologized.

Storm sat down next to Jean. "So Amy will be staying here?" she said. 

Jean nodded. " Charles said he's going to try to delay talking to Social Services about her for as long as possible. We don't want them to appoint Amy a new guardian, or worse, send her to another orphanage before we find her relatives."

Storm considered. "Why don't you and Scott apply to adopt her?" she suggested. "Then the question of appointed guardianship can be settled, and Charles can try to find her grandparents without rushing."

Jean looked at Scott. Scott looked back at her. "Wow. We didn't even think about that," Scott said, startled. "I don't see why we couldn't, unless you have a problem with it, Jean."

Jean looked uncertain. "What happens when we find her relatives, though? What happens then? What if they don't let her stay here? What if they want to take her away to live with them? It wouldn't be fair to Amy, Scott, if we let her get attached to us and then she has to move again. She needs a steady, stable place to grow up. The kind of life we lead isn't exactly steady and stable."

They all looked a little down. "I'm not saying we should nix the idea altogether, I'm just saying we should think about it. Maybe we should talk to Charles later about it, see what he says."

Upstairs, Amy said wistfully to Nathan, "I wish I had parents like that, that loved me like Jean and Scott love you. My Mom and Dad were like that, and then they died in a house fire. You know what I've wished for every birthday I've had since then? I wanted someone to adopt me who would love me like that again. But no one wants to adopt the older ones. They all want babies or really young children." She put her chin in her hands, depressed. "And nobody wants mutants."

Nathan looked at the quiet little girl sitting despondently on the end of the bed, and felt a rush of pity for her. He had never thought about what happened to orphans, what happened to the children nobody wanted. He was really lucky he'd had Slim and Red growing up. How much more awful for her, with no parents at all, and then to be used like that…he sighed to himself. She really did need someone to adopt her, to love her. Too bad there weren't a lot of parents like Jean and Scott out there…

A sudden thought made him sit up. Why couldn't Jean and Scott adopt her? She was old enough to keep the X-Men's secrets, old enough to take care of herself if they had to go on missions. It would be like having Jubilee around again. He made a mental note to speak to Jean and Scott about it later as he 'heard' the telepathic call for dinner. "Dinner's ready," he said, holding out a hand to her. "Want to go see what Scott, Ororo, and Remy made for dinner?"

"I'm coming," she said, bouncing up, all her melancholy evaporating. "I'm starved!"


	8. Robbery

Chapter 8: Robbery

Mr. Dare stared as Gilmore came storming in. "What happened?" he asked in surprise.

"That little bitch Amy got her memories unblocked by the mutants at the mansion next door," Gilmore snapped. "They know everything. They know about the robberies, and they know what I did to get Amy. They know I changed her name and they know I took her from her relatives. Xavier told me if I don't turn myself in to the authorities and disband the orphanage, he's going to tell them himself."

"Doesn't he realize if he tells anyone about us, the kids will go to prison?" Dare said in surprise.

""They've gotten Amy to believe it's an acceptable risk," Gilmore threw himself into an easy chair before the fireplace in the staff room and glowered into the fire. "She said she willing to if it means she gets away from us."

Greg Gilmore sat down beside him. "Dad, you're not going to give in, are you?" he whined, sounding, for the moment, more like a petulant child than the eighteen-year-old he really was. "You can't! You gotta get Amy back!"

"So you can play with her?" Gilmore snarled at his son. "What did you do to her, anyway? They said they'd found evidence that you were tampering with her mind when I didn't know about it. What did you do?"

"Nothing, Dad! Honest! Stefan and Chris and I were just…you know...picking on her…and we got a little carried away, I guess. We didn't want her to remember that we'd broken her legs, or her ribs, and stuff, and we did remember to tell you so she'd stay off the limbs till they healed."

Gilmore sat back heavily in his chair. "Boys will be boys, I guess," he said.

"So what are we going to do?" Fry asked.

Gilmore waved dismissively. "The other orphans can go back to their orphanages," he said. "The mutant kids are going to help us pull off the Manhattan Bank job, then we'll split the take and run. I'll kill the kids after we pull it off."

"What are we going to do about Amy?" Greg asked.

Gilmore stared broodingly into the fire. "I don't know," he said.

Scott and Jean were sitting in Xavier's study with him when there came a tap at the door. It opened, and Nate came in. "Hey," he said. "Am I interrupting anything?"

"No, you're not," Xavier said. "We were just discussing options. Please join us."

"Options?" Nathan said as he sat down in another chair.

"I found Amy's other grandparents," Xavier said gravely. "They died a year ago. I found their obituary in a Chicago paper."

"Oh, no," Nate groaned. "So she really doesn't have anyone left?"

"None that I could discover," Xavier said grimly. "Both her parents were only children, and I couldn't track down any siblings of her grandparents."

"What happens to her, then?" Nate asked. "She can't stay here forever, unless someone were to adopt her." He shot a meaningful glance to Jean.

She didn't miss the look. "Nate," she sighed, "I've been over this with Scott already. It's all very well to suggest we adopt her, but what do we do with her afterwards? Our lives as X-Men aren't the kind of stable, steady environment she needs to grow up in. She's had so much upheaval already, so many changes."

Nate gestured around him to the surrounding mansion. "Well, we're not going anywhere," he said. "The team may change, but there will always be X-Men here, at least for the foreseeable future. Charles will certainly be here for a while yet, if I have anything to say about it. She won't be lacking for anything if she's here. And really, Jean, how much different will it be having her around than it was having Jubilee? She could even go to the Massachusetts Academy if you think she needs to be with kids her own age."

Jean threw up her hands. "All right, all right! You guys win! I'll talk to Amy about it in the morning, okay? She might not want to stay here; what if she says no?"

Nate gave her a naughty sidelong look. "Jean, really," he said. "Do you honestly think she's going to say no?"

"No," Jean sighed. Then she giggled. "You'll have a bratty 'little sister' hanging around," she grinned. "So to speak. Are you ready to be a big brother?"

Nate groaned theatrically. "No, but if she says yes, then I'm going to have to learn real quick, aren't I?" He looked at Scott. "Are you ready to be a dad to a teenager?"

Scott grinned. "I leave it all up to Jean," he smiled. Jean punched him in the arm, and they all laughed.

Amy lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling. Her own room, her own bed, her own tiny bathroom. She hadn't had to share anything with anyone here except the shower with the other women here. She felt slightly awed, and kept pinching herself to see if she was dreaming. Surely any time now she'd wake up and find herself back in the girl's dorm in the orphanage! 

Her thoughts wandered back to the conversation Xavier had had with her while they waited for Headmaster Gilmore to arrive. "You may stay as long as you like," he'd told her. "I am going to try to find your grandparents, but until I do you're welcome to stay as long as you like. You're not going to go back to the orphanage."

To be able to stay here! Amy smiled in delight and rolled over. To not have to worry about the bigger boys picking on her, not to have to sneak around to read…Mr. Xavier had told her he would show her to the library the next day. The thought of a library, a whole room full of books, was heaven to her, who had had only one book besides her lesson books to read from.

She sat up. Not going back to the orphanage meant she wouldn't be able to get her book back! She hadn't thought about that before now. She had to go back, otherwise she'd lose her book. And it wasn't so much the book as it was the letter she had hidden in the pages. She had to get that back. She really had to. It was the only relic she had of her parents; she didn't even have photographs.

She slid out of bed and dressed quietly in the jeans and shirt they'd found for her to wear. Jean had said that they could go shopping the next day for more clothes for her if she wanted to; it was a generous offer. Amy smiled as she slipped her feet into her loafers. She'd sneak in, get her book from where she'd hidden it, and slip back out. No one would know where she'd been.

She opened her bedroom door, looked out. The hall was quiet, the carpet silvered by moonlight lying across it from the large window at the end of the hall. Most of the lights in the rooms were out, though she did see a sliver of light coming from under a door at the end of the hall. Amy tiptoed quietly past the doors, descended the stairs quietly, and crept past the rec room, where she could see two people playing pool. A quick dash through the kitchen, a silent turning of the lock in the door, and she swung the door open, slipped out, and shut the door quietly.

The bright light of a nearly-full moon illuminated her way across the green lawns as she walked down toward the lake. She looked up at the stars, hanging brightly in the sky above her, and grinned. She paused by the lake, impulsively climbed onto the stargazing rock, and looked up at the bejeweled night sky above her. She knew why they called this the star-watching rock now; she could see so many stars from her perch on the rock. "Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket…" she sang softly, a phrase from some unknown tune she must have heard at one time or another and forgotten. A breeze riffled the surface of the lake, silvering it, and she grinned even as she shivered in the chill. She would have to hurry. It was getting cold.

She hurried around the perimeter of the lake and ran silently up the back lawn to the orphanage. The outside duty crew had done wonders with the lawns in the few days she'd been gone; she stared in surprise at the manicured grass, neatly edged flowerbeds, and pretty flowers planted neatly around the margins of the bushes. The siding had been repainted, the roof reshingled, windows replaced and their frames repaired. It almost looked cheerful now.

She sneaked across the lawn to the door leading into the cellar. She'd taken care to jimmy the lock on that door in such a way that if you shook the knob a certain way, it would open. To her great relief, it hadn't been fixed yet, and it swung open at her touch, creaking a bit. She froze for long minutes, waiting for some sign that anyone had heard and was coming to investigate. No one did.

She climbed the cellar stairs, avoiding all the creaky places from habit. She had used the cellar door to sneak out at night and bathe and drink from the lake, and she knew where all the creaky steps were. She got up the stairs, opened the door at the top of the stairs, and crept out into the kitchen.

Here too it looked different; white walls, tiles scrubbed clean, the floor gleaming from a new coat of wax. Dishes were stacked neatly on the counters, waiting for the kitchen crew to come back in the morning and make breakfast. She walked through the kitchen, out into the front rooms, and crept up the stairs to the girls' room.

Everything was still silent. Counting her blessings, she tiptoed down the row of beds to where hers was, and dropped to her knees at the foot of her bed. Digging her nails under the floorboards, she pried up the loose one she hid her book under, slipped her hand under it and felt for her book. The space was empty!

"Looking for this?" came a voice from behind her, and she whirled as the light in the dorm clicked on. All the girls sat up, blinking and rubbing their eyes.

Amy froze. Gilmore, Greg, and Mr. Fry stood behind her. Mr. Gilmore held her book.

"Give that back!" she cried desperately, jumping up and trying to snatch it from his hand.

He lashed out with one hand, striking her cheek, and she fell to the floor with a cry. Mr. Fry grabbed her arm, hauled her upright. Amy stumbled in his wake as she was dragged out of the room and down the hall to the staff rooms.

He shoved her into a chair as Gilmore dropped the book on the table. "So, the prodigal returns," he said. "Just in time, too. We can pull off the Manhattan bank heist tonight, and be in Acapulco tomorrow."

Amy tried to jump up, out of the chair, but Mr. Fry grabbed her hair and yanked backwards, pulling her back down. "I'm not helping you rob any more banks, Headmaster," she said. 'Do your own dirty work."

Gilmore opened the door to his bedroom and the other six mutant children walked in from where they were hiding. Stefan stopped in front of her, and she stiffened. Her new-found memories told her that he was the most brutal of the lot of them; he'd hurt her badly on several occasions. "Do you want to rethink that?" Gilmore said mildly.

"I'm through doing your dirty work for you," she snapped.

Stefan curled up his fist and drove it into her stomach. She gasped, doubling over as the wind was driven out of her. It took a few moments for her to recover. When she straightened up again, the fist plowed into her middle.

By the fifth blow she was seeing stars. Her body slid numbly out of the chair, and she curled up on the floor gasping. Stefan was on a roll now, and didn't want to stop. Amy's face swelled and bruised from his repeated kicks and punches, and she was crying weakly by the time Gilmore stopped him. "All right," she whimpered. "All right, I'll do it."

Greg Gilmore's smile was the last thing she saw before he slipped into her mind and knocked her out.

She awoke, tied to the chair, early the next morning. She was stiff, and her back hurt from sitting there so long, but they didn't care. Gilmore, Fry, and Dare assigned chores to the other orphans and then slipped upstairs. Amy tried to protest again as they untied her, but Greg sent a sharp spike of pain stabbing through her mind, and she stayed quiet, though her anger simmered.

She was silent as Gilmore, Fry, and another teacher, Mr. Dare, took them out the front door and loaded them into the back of the van. The boys chattered excitedly about the job they were going to do, but Amy sat silent. She hated this. She didn't want to do this. Why, oh why, had she left the safety of Mr. Xavier's home? Was her parents' letter really worth this?

They pulled up in the alley behind the bank, and Gilmore turned to them. "Okay," he said, you know what you have to do."

Greg closed his eyes, concentrated. "The bank isn't open yet," he said. "The bank president's in there with the vice president, and two tellers. And the security guard, but he's with us, isn't he? He's our insider?" 

Gilmore nodded. "Is that all?"

Greg nodded.

"All right, good job. Stefan, you, Drew, and Lucas get going. Remember to hold hands, too! You don't want to get left behind!"

The three boys got out of the van and linked hands, then Stefan walked into the brick wall of the bank and the boys disappeared. Gilmore settled back into his seat, his eyes glued nervously to his watch.

Almost half an hour later, they walked back out of the wall, each carrying a giant sack bulging at the seams with bills. Amy pressed her lips together, biting back the cry that wanted to escape her throat. She wanted to scream, _They're here!_ But no one would hear her this early in the morning anyway. Anger simmered in her mind, and her eyes and hands began to glow faintly in the darkness of the back of the van. Greg kept sending little spikes of mental pain into her brain, and that distracted her from the fact that deep inside her, her fury had woken the flames that slumbered inside her.

Fry opened the back door of the van and the three boys climbed in, still holding hands. As soon as they were in, though, Lucas dropped his sack with a groan, and the other two boys suddenly found their loads too heavy for them to lift. Sweat popped out all over Luke's brow at the effort of shifting the mass of roughly a million dollars in the bags the two boys had carried. "Okay," Gilmore cheered, clapping his son on the back. "Any sign that anybody knows something's wrong?"

Greg concentrated again. "Nope. They won't know the money's gone until they go to the vault to refill their tills. And that will be never." 

Gilmore pulled the van out of the alley at a leisurely pace, not bothering with haste or speed, since no one was there to watch them anyway. A block down, he stopped the van and pulled over. "Now," he said to Amy, "Use your flames to set fire to the bank."

Amy stared, horrified. She couldn't…she couldn't! and in her mind flashed the memory of the last job they'd pulled, Gilmore had wanted her to set fire to the bank. She'd refused. Greg had taken control of her mind and forced her to…

Just like he was doing now. Amy's mind put up a feeble, angered resistance, but she didn't really know how to adequately shield against a telepathic assault. Greg slipped in control of her body easily, brought her hands up as she watched him use her helplessly, and called up the fire in her.

Amy had always envisioned her power rather as being like a great fiery dragon that slept inside her, curled up until she was ready to use it. Now Greg prodded at the dragon, rousing it, and took control of it through Amy's mind. The dragon uncoiled on Amy's palm, a sinuous, writhing red, orange and gold shape that uncoiled and stretched out to its full length. Greg goaded it some more, and the dragon rose to its full height, some eight feet above the car, and at Greg's urging it spat a great gout of flame at the building.

Amy had always found it pecuiliar that her power could make anything burst into flame. Everything she'd ever practiced on, from simple gas-soaked scraps of cloth all the way down to rocks, she could make explode into flames. The brick of the bank building burst into flame obediently, and Amy listened to the screams of the people trapped inside as Greg held her under control.

The other boys in the van turned to slowly look at Gilmore and Greg, horror on their faces. They hadn't known about the plot to kill the occupants of the bank; they thought they were only going in to grab the money and run. "Hey, we didn't agree to this," Drew objected. "They're dying in there! We gotta go help them!" they all started to scramble out of the van, leaving Gilmore and Greg sitting in the front seat and Amy and Fry in the back with the bags of money.

Greg raised Amy's hand, and Amy screamed mentally in horror as the six boys burst into flame. They didn't even have time to scream; they died right there, instantly. She beat against the overwhelming presence of Greg in her mind, but was ineffective as Gilmore shut the doors and drove away from the six small bonfires lying in the middle of the street. 


	9. Conflagration

Chapter 9: Conflagration

"Is Amy not awake yet?" Jean asked the X-Men at large as she sat down at the breakfast table. "She's usually up early, especially for breakfast."

Ororo blinked. "I haven't seen her yet this morning, Jean," she said, putting her napkin down on the table. "And you are right, she usually is quite punctual, especially for meals. I will go and check on her."

Storm went up the stairs and down the hall to where Amy's room was, raised a hand, and tapped on the door lightly. When there was no answer, she turned the knob and opened the door. "Amy?" she said, and stopped short as she realized the room was empty. The bed was rumpled a bit, but it didn't look like it had been slept in.

Ororo turned and raced back down the stairs. "Jean, she is not here. Her bed does not look to have been slept in, and her shoes are missing. Where could she have gone?"

Jean flicked a thought upstairs, to Xavier. **Charles!** She said. **Amy's gone, we can't find her. Can you use Cerebro to try to find her? Or should we just go straight to the orphanage?**

**The orphanage,** Xavier said. **She went back there to get her things from Gilmore. I'm fairly certain that he is keeping her there.**

Just then, Bobby came in. "Did you guys see the news?" h said excitedly. "There was a robbery at the Manhattan Savings Bank this morning, and now the building's on fire."

Jean's eyes widened. **Charles, did you hear that?**

Yes, Xavier sounded grim. **Get to the orphanage, as quickly as possible. I'm fairly certain that you're going to find Amy there, in the middle of all the mess. Be careful, and don't hurt her, or any of the kids. She may be under some kind of coercion.**

They arrived at the end of the drive just as the last of the children were being ushered into the minibus belonging to the orphanage. Gilmore, Amy, a boy Jean recognized as Greg Gilmore, and another man who they assumed was one of the staff were standing at the end or the drive. As soon as Jean got close she could feel the psychic web woven around Amy's mind by the younger Gilmore. Xavier's guess was correct, then.

"Gilmore!" Scott called as the X-Men ranged themselves around him, watchful but not really ready for trouble from an innocuous group of kids. "Let the kids go! Turn yourself in to the police! We know you robbed the bank this morning by using the kids!"

Gilmore turned to his son. "Use Amy to kill them, then we can go," he said. Jean felt a sudden surge in psychic activity between Greg and Amy, then Amy raised her arms stiffly, her eyes blank, and pointed at the X-Men. A sheet of flame rolled toward them. Bobby barely got his ice shield up in time; but it was going to melt in no time at all, as the intense heat of the flames got stronger.

Storm took to the air, calling on the clouds hovering overhead to produce rain. At her urging, they obliged, and the flames began to die.

Amy bought both hands up, and the flames sprang back to life. They were much higher now, and the rain Storm was calling down wasn't doing much to quell them. It leaped toward them as the last of Bobby's ice wall collapsed. Jean saved them in the nick of time by setting up a telekinetic bubble around them. "Amy!" she screamed at the girl from inside the bubble. "Amy, stop this, we're your friends!" The girl just looked at her blankly, and the flames rose higher. The grass around them caught fire. Jean watched helplessly as the flames raced across the lawn toward the building. The wooden steps caught fire almost as soon as the flames licked at them.

The fire raced up the old wooden steps, their way only accelerated by the new coating of paint on the wood. Soon the entire front of the building was burning. Jean spared only one anguished glance at it as all the orphans' hard work went up in flames; she was trying to keep her and her teammates alive, and she couldn't worry about a building.

Amy turned her attention from the group inside the bubble to the figure hovering in air above her head, whipping up monsoon-like rains. A long ribbon of fire leaped from her hands and hurtled toward Storm, taking the form of a long, sinuous, fiery dragon. Storm dodged the manifestation easily as it shot past her, sizzling as raindrops hit it. It coiled around itself, changing directions almost faster than the eye could see, and went after her again. As Storm dodged around it, she pelted it with heavy rain, but that didn't faze it a bit. It opened its mouth and spat a gout of flame at her. Jean heard Storm scream in pain as the flame seared her arm. She tumbled out of the sky, and Jean barely had time to collapse the telekinetic bubble around them and spread a glittering web below her friend. Storm landed in the web, and the X-Men pulled back warily as she assessed the damage. Storm's face was contorted in pain, and her arm was badly burned. She wasn't going to be able to help them any further.

Bishop snarled in rage and drew his gun. Before Jean or Scott could stop him, he fired at the young girl. Jean's anguished "No!" turned into a gasp of surprise as the bullets stopped in midair, turned into molten balls of flame, and dropped to the scorched, bare earth. Bishop lowered his gun, surprise plastered all over his face, and Amy used the moment to attack them. A wall of flame sprang up around them. Bobby cried out in surprise as the flames licked at his leg, burning through the ice coating and his uniform.

Gilmore waved the bus of the other orphans off while watching his son and the girl out the corner of his eye. He was surprised at the amount of power the girl was wielding. He'd never known how much she had at her disposal, though he'd had a vague idea that it was considerable, given her ability to burn an entire bank. So engrossed was he in watching his son and the girl, he never saw the police cars pull up at the end of the long drive in front of the building, and several police officers get out.

Greg had his eyes closed, concentrating. Amy was fighting his control, battering at his mental barriers, and he was having trouble controlling her powers and fighting her at the same time. She was beating at his mind, much like a caged wild bird fighting the bars of its cage, but he was stronger, and she wasn't focusing her mental strength to fighting him.

Jean and the other X-Men stood in the center of the rapidly shrinking fiery circle, at a loss for what to do next. Amy's power was phenomenal; Jean had never seen its like before. She bit her lip, eyes wide, looking apprehensively at the girl. "Amy!" she called once again, "Amy!" Getting no response, she focused her telepathic powers at the girl and spoke to her mentally. **Amy!**

**She's under my control,** said a harsh, male mental voice, and Jean opened her eyes, looking straight at Greg Gilmore. He was smiling. **I control her body and her powers. You've no idea how powerful she is! It's intoxicating! I'm going to kill you all, and she's going to have to watch!**

Jean pushed against the mental shield around Greg Gilmore's mind first gently, then more strongly. **You can't have her!** She said grimly into Greg's mind. **I'm not going to allow it! **She shoved with all her strength at his shields.

He shrieked. **Stop it!** He doubled over, clutching his head in his hands as he fought to keep control of Amy and repel Jean at the same time. Jean began a steady barrage against his mind, keeping him off balance. The control was starting to erode, little by little…

**Mom!** Came a new voice in Jean's head. It was Nate. He opened his mind completely, giving her access to his telepathic powers. It wasn't much, but it was enough.

Greg Gilmore fell over backward, screaming in frustration and anger as his hold over Amy's mind snapped. Jean gasped and stopped attacking him, exhausted, as she felt Amy's consciousness fill her own mind again.

Amy turned to Greg, filled with rage, and Jean gasped as she saw the flames dancing in her eyes. If she was powerful before, what she was now was beyond power. Orange and gold sparks began to dance over her body and through her hair, and gathered at her fingertips. The fire dragon burst into being again, over her head, and hovered again, becoming larger and more powerful. Then it turned, swift as light, and coiled around Greg Gilmore. The eighteen year old disappeared, screaming, in a maelstrom of fire. The X-Men stared in shocked silence as it writhed in circles around the boy. From within the flames, the screaming stopped, and the dragon uncurled itself, springing into the sky with a roar of flames. Behind it, on the ground, lay a smoking, charred heap of scorched bone and burnt flesh. The stench of burned human flesh filled their noses, and Scott grimaced in distaste.

But there was no time for them to stop, because that terrible flaming manifestation was turning its attention to Headmaster Gilmore. "Amy! Amy, stop!" Jean screamed, but her words went unheeded as the dragon descended on Gilmore himself. The man's screams were awful to hear as the fire devoured him, burned him, seared the flesh from his bone and leaving a smoking ruin behind.

Amy turned, her face expressionless, as Gilmore screamed his last behind her, and walked into the burning orphanage. She disappeared inside, and Jean could follow her progress through the building as more and more windows burst outward from the flames raging within. It was only a few minutes before Amy reappeared, and in her hands, safe in the middle of the flames raging around her, was her precious book.

Fire engines and police cars with their sirens on came screaming up the road and stopped. The police stared in shock at the flaming building, at the flaming girl, at the two charred bodies lying on the ground as the firefighters hooked up a hose to a hydrant. "Wait!" Jean cried out, "Wait, we can stop her, we can get her out of it, please wait…" But the firefighters aimed the hose at Amy and turned on the water.

The force and pressure of the water slammed into her, and they all heard her scream in shock and pain as the blast knocked her off her feet and pushed her in the side of the building. All the flames stopped, as if they were snuffed out by a giant hand, but they kept battering Amy with the hard spray from the fire hose until she lay, semi-conscious and moaning, on the ground. The police stepped forward, snapped a collar around her neck that would prohibit the use of her mutant powers, then cuffed her hands behind her back. 

Jean walked up to the officer who seemed to be in charge. "Officer, wait," she said. "She's only a child, you don't need to take her to jail, we saw it all…"

The man pushed his hat to the back of his head. Jean recognized him as an officer they'd seen before at other incidents all around the city. "Please, Officer Cohen," she pleaded. "Amy's a friend of ours; she didn't mean to do this, she was under someone else's mind control."

The officer shook his head. While not exactly a fan of theirs, they'd never done him harm, and he'd made a promise to himself to leave them alone. This girl, though…"Ma'am," he said, "As much as I'd like to believe that, I saw her shake off the other boy's mind control before she killed the man. And the stolen money from the bank is in the car they were planning to escape in. And ma'am, I don't know if she was under mind control at the bank or not, but there are six dead boys back at the bank. Their bodies are burned almost beyond recognition. She did it. We have to take her in."

Jean stepped back, tears filling her eyes as they dropped Amy's limp body across the back seat. "Amy," she said to the exhausted girl, "Amy, we'll see you down at the police station."

A short time later, Jean, Scott, and Xavier were at the police station, looking at the girl slumped at the interrogation table. A detective was questioning her, and Amy answered dully, exhausted and dispirited.

"Were you part of the group that robbed the bank this morning?" he asked. Amy nodded.

"What happened?" he switched on a tape recorder as Amy started to speak.

"Mr. Gilmore, Drew, Stefan, Matt, Luke, Shawn, Chris, Greg, and I went out to the bank early this morning," she said. "Drew, Stefan, and Matt took the money; I was supposed to set fire to the building after they were all out. I didn't want to, so Greg took control of me...he was a telepath…and made me set fire to the bank. Then when Mr. Gilmore told him to, he made me kill them. Greg made me set fire to them and push them out. We left them there and came back.

"This was going to be his last heist. He put the other kids, the normal ones, into the bus and tried to send them off, when the X-Men came. Greg made me fight them; I hurt St—I hurt a couple of them badly. Then the one called Phoenix broke the hold he had on my mind.

"I should have stopped. I didn't. I got angry. I've never been that angry before. And the dragon—the manifestation of my powers—woke inside me, and I couldn't stop it. It fed off my anger, and went and destroyed Greg, then Headmaster Gilmore, and then the orphanage. I did kill him. I'm sorry I did." She looked up for the first time, and the watching X-Men saw despair and anguish in her eyes. "I didn't mean to kill him. I didn't. I just couldn't control the flames anymore," she finished. Her head bowed, and her face fell into her hands, and she began to sob in sorrow and remorse. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she cried. 

Xavier drew in a breath and turned to the man standing beside him. "What will happen to her now?"

The District Attorney sighed. "She's going to have to go to a secure facility for mutants, I'm afraid. She killed a man in cold blood, and while my instinct as a man is to give her a medal for stopping the long string of bank robberies happening up and down the east coast, my duty as a district Attorney is to put her where she won't hurt anyone again. And that means she's going to have to go to Mount Haven." He turned to Xavier. "You know the place, you helped to build it. You can see her whenever you wish. She will, of course, be treated by a psychiatrist, and perhaps she'll be released after we're sure she won't be hurting anyone again." He scratched his head. "I still don't see how you got mixed up with her in the first place."

Xavier thought back to the evening by the lake. "The 'orphanage' Harvey Gilmore was using as a front was on the property adjoining mine," he said. "She wandered over the line and I found her one evening sitting by a lake on my property, reading. We struck up a conversation."

"Reading this?" said an officer, coming up with Amy's sodden clothes and a waterlogged volume. Xavier took it with a pang of regret. It was Amy's copy of King Lear. He took it, opened it, looked inside. Inside, on page twenty, was the letter, wet, soaked, but the writing on the envelope was still legible. He took it with tears in his eyes.

The officer went in and took Amy's arm. As she was going out, she saw Xavier. With a moan she pulled away from the officer and hurled herself at him, burying her face in his shoulder. "I'm sorry," she wept, "I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have gone back, but I wanted my book. Please forgive me."

"There's nothing to forgive," Xavier said gently, patting her shoulder. "Just go with them, Amy. Nothing will hurt you. They'll help you learn to control your anger and your powers at Mount Haven. I'll come and see you as often as I can, and when you're in control again you'll be released. And you can always come back, Amy, when they let you go."

"Can't you make them let me go?" she said pleadingly, looking at him. He shook his head. "Amy, having released your powers like that once, we can't be sure you won't do that again. You're a danger to yourself and to others as long as you can't control your anger and your powers."

She stood at the officer's prompting. "I'll come back," she vowed, standing up and stepping back. "I'll learn to control it all, and then I'll come back." She turned and followed the officer out of the interrogation block.

Xavier sat there, watching her leave, feeling the rough texture of her book under his fingers, and knew, with a certainty that went bone deep, that he would see her again.


End file.
